I actually was able to find a solution for this issue for anyone else with similar problems:
unless there is another solution I missed this is how I was able to solve it-
if statements won't do the entire trick, indexing is required
T{:,'E'} = 1.18*exp(-0.18*T{:,'D'});
idx = T{:,'D'} < 1.2;
T{idx,'E'} = 1.0;
idx2 = T{:,'D'} > 6.5;
T{idx2,'E'} = 0.23;