So, I'll be using some lower-tech solutions like you suggested Paul, and try to use some perl subs to make the operations easier. Thanks for the suggestion!
I have gotten AskSage working, though unfortunately not to the point where I am comfortable using it - there still seem to be some problems I'm encountering that are unavoidable at the moment. For instance, I attempted to create a 3x1 matrix, a vertical column, and use this in a problem but changing between the output of sage and the constructor of a matrix makes it always a 1x3 matrix, a horizontal row.