Removing VLAN - and routing to Node

As long as you have objects that reference a specifically defined subnet, you're not going to be able to delete the self-IP and consequently the VLAN. As you've found, however, you don't need to delete the VLAN and self-IP to get to these routed nodes. You don't even really need a default route as long as you have A route. So what you're probably going to have to do is (perhaps slowly) migrate existing pools to the routed members, and once all of the local stuff is gone, then you can delete the self-IP.