I did. You either didn't or read what you wanted to read. The FBI didn't ask for SSL keys right off the bat. They asked for info on Snowden's account. After Lavabit refusing and then agreeing but allegedly dragging it's feet on doing so, a federal judge issued an order for the SSL keys.
"On August 8th, rather than turning over the master key, Levison shut down Lavabit." seems to imply that they never got the information necessary to decrypt the data.
I did actually miss that part. I figured he gave them an electronic copy when he shut down.
Minimally, he gave them an "illegible copy." in 4 point font.Assuming its the actual key, I'm sure the FBI or NSA can OCR that. Even if parts of it are screwed up, SSL private keys actually have a fair amount of structure in them(at least enough to recover from someone writer "FUCK A DUCK" over and over again over part of one [0]) and even if say half the bits of the key give are illegible totally, the rest give you more than enough to factor it.
