I'm afraid we didn't get any closer to a solution for the problem though 
To recap:
- the PowerCLI snapin is loaded when you start the PowerCLI prompt (confirmed by the Get-PSSNapin cmdlet)
- from the PowerCLI prompt you can run any PowerShell (Get-Process...) or PowerCLI cmdlet (Connect-VIServer, Get-VM, Get-VMHost...)
- when you use a .ps1 script and add these same cmdlets (basic PowerShell or PowerCLI) in there, you get the "cmdlet is not recognized" error
- the scripts are started with a full path (C:\scripts\test.ps1) or after positioning to the directory (c: ; cd /scripts; ./test.ps1)
- the execution policy is set to RemoteSigned
Just to try something completely different, could you try doing the same exercise (install PowerCLI and try to run a script) on a workstation (XP or W7 perhaps) ?