Neb- yup, anything that generates a force normal to it's surface in a moving fluid medium does it the same way, whether it's a wing in flight, a spinning propeller, or a car on a road. It's all about getting the pressure over the top and bottom to be different, whether it's done by the shape of the object or some other means.
One thing about kites. They fly, or really stay aloft, since it's not really flight, by acting like a flat plate at an angle of attack. Any time a particle hits an tiltled surface, the surface feels a force normal to itself, which can be resovled into a force that's perpendicular to the particle (lift), and a force parallel to the particle (drag). This has nothing to do pressure differences or flows, it's just basic physics. This does account for some lift produced by an airfoil at an AoA, just not much. Any significant amount of lift also generates huge drag, so it just won't work for aircraft. But since a kite or parasail is teathered, drag is canceled out by whoever or whatever holding the kite.
The velocity does increase over the top of the wing since the air flowing over it has to travel a further distance (for most airfoils or a symmetric airfoil at some positive angle of attack) than the more direct route under the wing.
Hey Q, this just reminded me of something our prof. told us once. Have you ever heard that old explanation of why the air speeds up over the top of the airfoil, the one that says if you have two particles that start at the front of the foil, one over the top and one over the bottom that they'll reach the back at the same time? It's wrong. Here's the proof: A cambered flate plate at 0 AoA. It's cambered, so it produces lift so the air over the top must be faster, yet it's flat so the total distance over the top and bottom must be the same. Anyways, just a little fun tidbit to play with.