That's because editing is a hovery button and Simon seemed to really not know that touch can't hover.
Basically I could write you a bookmarklet to enable these but that means having to click the bookmarklet's entry every time you want it applied:
http://static.chrisbray.com/bookmarklets/ on how to actually use bookmarklets on an iPad.
The bookmarklet code is below:
javascript:var s = "ul.MessageList li.Post div.Meta span.Actions a {visibility: visible !important;}", j = document.createElement("style"); j.innerText=s; document.head.appendChild(j);