When I needed to create multi-page PDFs from SVG, I first created single-page PDFs from SVG by launching Inkscape via system() (see imagestream.pl in App-imagestream, not yet on CPAN), and then combined the PDFs to a multi-page PDF using (I think) CAM::PDF (http://search.cpan.org/~cdolan/CAM-PDF-1.57/bin/appendpdf.pl|appendpdf.pl].
At least in Inkscape, PDF (1.1 I think) supports a wrapping textbox element. I had problems with
that element rendering improperly under early Firefox versions (2.x), but as you want to deliver
PDF anyway, this shouldn't be a problem.
I suppose that if your tools are not rendering the fonts properly that there is something wonky with the font setup. Maybe these applications need to be told where the fonts are to be found, or the font names need to be mangled? I've only used Inkscape as my renderer (also see uniConvertor for a headless version).