Turns out it was underlying OS issue. For whatever reason, the update broke the gamecon driver for SNES controller input. After uninstalling the db9 and gamecon drivers, rebooting, reinstalling then rebooting, my pad now works as one would expect!

What cued me into it was while reviewing logs after an update failure I found a gamecon update failed message. Researched it and found this info at the link below.

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3875/solved-gamecon-installation-fails/10

@Efriim, really appreciate all your help and insight onto this issue. You helped direct me to look more into the software side and that's where it was.