I'm wondering when the titleForHeaderInSection would be called, and the usage scenario its for, because I've implemented it, but it never gets called and the table builds as shown at bottom.
It's a convenience method.
If you don't want to change the cell, and just want to provide the text, you can just return the string you want to be displayed.
Since you're creating the section header cell, we don't invoke it. You could invoke it yourself, however that would just be extraneous.
-SteveZ