As for statements equating MQTT with CoAP style REST and why they're not complete or true:
CoAP URI path == MQTT topic
This appears to be true because they have a lot in common. In reality an MQTT topic is ephemeral (or you could say it's just a convention). You don't create it, you don't delete it, you just use it to synchronize where you're publishing and where you're subscribing.
A CoAP URI is material. Or at least it is with Californium, and I believe it has to be this way as long as CoAP is used in conjunction with CoRE link formats because all resources have to be enumerated so they can be described by the CoRE document.