It seems to me that you do not necessarily want a CNC system, This is a system you could easily integrate using a single axis Galil card and a Maple systems display for operator entry if needed.
There are Galil DMC-1000 or DMC-1500 stand-alone controller on ebay all the time for cheap, then if you have a servo that is close coupled, you can index it off the encoder for degree positioning.
I just finished a 36" table fitted to a CNC mill using this method, using the built in native language of the motion card.
The Galil has 16 I/O but is expandable. There are other stand alone controller out there that should do it.
It sound like you just need a standard multi-station indexing table.
Al.