My carousel reverted again - now shows the apps just like it had before. Just to be clear; I already had the latest firmware installed before this happened. I didn't do anything to the unit to cause the change (that I can tell) and didn't do anything to cause it to go back.
I think the important lesson from this is that it is apparently pretty easy for the carousel to distinguish between apps and media, so theoretically it should be a simple matter to allow the user to toggle between showing different kinds of things in the carousel. You know, when Amazon releases their 6.2.3 software with the included carousel management features