I'm not sure what exactly I touched, but it seems to be working better now.
I found that my /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg had sdl2 driver set as default ... I changed that to udev. Now, both my controllers seem to work.
I had originally thought that my old PC had a legacy BIOS/usb option that was doing something ... but didn't prove out to be anything useful. I think the change from sdl2 to udev in the default config was what did it. I don't have a verbose logging or capture of files to prove that, but my verbose logging now shows that udev device being used. Spot check of a few other games seems to have good results. I have a feeling that my install for some reason defaulted to sdl2 driver and what was my issue.
Thanks for the help