Not sure if I’ll ever understand why it happened by my resolution was to remove cordova and ionic from npm. Then remove node completely.
Re-installed node using homebrew and fixed symlinks.
Installed cordova and ionic as sudo: sudo npm install -g cordova ionic@beta
Deleted original platforms folder
Manually added platforms again without sudo: ionic platform add ios
Built each platform without sudo: ionic build ios
Took ownership of all files in home directory: sudo chown -R username /Users/username (as suggested here: http://zacvineyard.com/blog/2015/11/ionic-invalid-device-state-error-with-xcode-7-solved)
Ran the emulator, and it all just worked. Hopefully I can come back to the StatusBar issue in the future, but for now I’m happy.