The issue I have is that these are back-end functions with no UI interaction, yet simpletest unit test, from what I read, does not provide the functionality for accessing the db, creating test tables and data, etc.

Do I fudge it by having a menu callback, or by having an admin page with a button if necessary, so that I can webtest, or do I manually include db.inc, etc. so that I can access the db, (though I think it would need to be much dirtier than that)?