I've got a working SOAP::Lite client. It works against an established server, but so far my development server is sending back nothing except a 404. (Which is odd, because I'm not even seeing a connection on the server end.)
The closest parallel that I'm used to is Net::FTP.
my $ftp = Net::FTP->new( "some.host.name", Debug => 1 );
Might I recommend using a tool like wireshark to capture the network traffic of your SOAP app to see exactly what's going on in the network. You should be able to right-click on a series of packets and select "Follow TCP Stream" to see the full HTTP exchange.
Did you see the documentation for SOAP::Trace? I haven't tried it myself, but it all sounds really promising.