cream cheese

These are quite different ingredients in many ways but the two that matter the most for baking are fat and water.

Crisco/Shortening is pure fat. This will produce a stiffer batter. It will cream well without dissolving the sugar. There are questionable health effects from this hydrogenated fat and good cooks avoid it, using butter instead. However, butter is about 18% water so there are some adapations needed in most recipes when substituting butter for shortening.

Margarine has quite a bit of water often around 50%. This can cause problems as the cake cooks as there's extra water to dissipate. Sugars can dissolve while creaming leading to reduced leavenign. In fact, a batter may be to runny to hold the lift from the leavening when the temp is reached for baking powder to react. In cookies, this makes them spread a lot and be thin. How much and what type of fat they use is also variable so it's quite hard to predict results. It may or may not be hydrogenated or saturated. You never know what brand a recipe was tested with . And margarine is in many ways a poor product.

Cream cheese is about 30% fat as I recall. I don't know it's water content off hand but it's fairly high. There is also a tangy flavor to cream cheese that may not be appropriate to the cake. Again, lots of water for the batter to deal with the same resulting problems.