Anyway to get the panel to only show windows for the currently selected workspace?
The why it works for me right now is it will always show every window in the panel no matter what workspace the window is active on.

I hope this makes sense. Thanks.

Assuming that you use KDE 4.x: right click on empty space in task manager -> Task Manager Settings -> "Only show tasks from the current desktop". If you don't see this option it's possible that your KDE version is too old.

By the way, the panel itself doesn't show the tasks. It's the task manager's job, which is just a widget.
If there is no empty space, you can click on the yellow icon (cashew) on the panel first and then right click.

Ah! thanks a million! Why didn't i think to look there! Silly me.

+1, this new KDE is a bit tricky, but good anyway; the first thing to remember is using those yellow widget confing buttons.