This commit: https://github.com/opscode/chef/commit/024b1e3e4de523d3c1ebbb42883a2bef3f9f415c introduced a requirement that a service have a plist file for any action, but a service that is being created will not have a plist file yet. Chef now only requires that a service have a plist for the enable and disable actions.
CHEF-1761 introduced a regression for signal handling when not in daemon mode (see CHEF-5172). Chef will now, once again, exit immediately on SIGTERM if it is not in daemon mode, otherwise it will complete it's current run before existing.
The "compatibility interface" for /etc/init.d/ is no longer used at least as of 13.10 (per the Ubuntu wiki page). The default service provider in Chef for Ubuntu is C::\P::S::Debian, which uses /etc/init.d/service_name with the start, stop, etc commands to manage the script. If you are able to use the init provider just fine, you will need to manually override the provider back to Debian.