Dashboard Lights dead?

So from about a month or so to now, my 4th gen had been "acting weird" when I took a turn. It seemed like the truck would slow down to a full stop when taking a turn, and depending on which way I took a turn, my tires would "hop". Kinda' like what happens when you have your diff locked and you drive on pavement.

Well, me being me, it never occurred to me that I may have pressed the diff lock button by accident and the light just never came up. After a lot of wondering and checking (unsuccessfully) to see if my 33's were rubbing anywhere and that was causing the problem. I decided to just have the dealer take a look at it.

Sure enough, they came back saying my diff was locked and all they had to do was unlock it and everything was back to normal. However, they told me my "combination meter" was bad i.e. my gauge cluster where all the dashboard lights are.

Of course, they want waaay too much money for that, like $1.5k, and I'm trying to find a workaround. So here is my question to see if anyone has come across this.

Have you experienced this problem? If so, few things I'm wondering:

1- Is it the LEDs that are dead? I've seen threads and videos of people replacing the LEDs because they want a different colored dashboard. Could I potentially just disassemble my cluster, replace the LEDs and be done with it?

2- If I do have to replace the entire cluster, do you have any advice on how to identify the exact same cluster on a truck from a junkyard?

3- If I replace the cluster, how do I transfer the mileage from one board to the other one?

4- I'm thinking of just making my own little board of LEDs and maybe getting wires out of the switches to indicate to me that a switch has been pressed (basically would be making my own set of dashboard lights), but I'm not sure if I should be tapping out of the switches or if there are better locations to get my wires from (like straight from the dash or maybe somewhere else).

Thanks for any advice you guys can provide!