Happy New Year Tim!
Is this similar to what you wanted? It's a bit of a toy as I'm just passing by on a Sunday evening, note I've used Dynamic around all the instances of the label rather than TabView as I didn't want the whole element to be re-drawn after each update.
DynamicModule[{lab1 = "Label One", lab2 = "Two", lab3},
TabView[{
Dynamic[lab1] ->
Column[{
InputField[Dynamic[lab1], String,
FieldHint -> "Label for first tab"],
InputField[Dynamic[lab2], String,
FieldHint -> "Label for second tab"]}],
Dynamic[lab2] ->
Manipulate[
Plot[x^lab3, {x, 0, 5}],
{lab3, 1, 10}, LocalizeVariables -> False],
Dynamic[lab3] -> "hey"
}]
]
