Im not sure you read or understand the links correctly so let me clarify.
>This is very different from a more colloquially understood usage of cancel, which would imply that they immediately terminated service and did not allow the domain registrant to keep the domain.
that is exactly what CloudFlare did. They manually set the domain to expire quickly and prevented the user from transferring it out.
In the case of NameCheap, while they did allow transfers out, also manually set the domain to expire quickly and failed to give users adequate time to transfer.
Overriding a domains expiration date to a date in the near future is akin to cancellation. Sure we could split hairs and argue semantics about the technical difference between a "forced accelerated expiry" and a "cancellation". But ultimately what matters is, in both cases, the registrars manually overrided the domains registered expiration dates with a date in near future, effectively cancelling them. 100% "taking them away without just cause".