So, no joy after digging more into why apt and the related install scripts weren’t updating the kernel. 'apt remove' of the 6.16 kernel
did clean up most of the mess in /boot and / The issue was somewhere in the initramfs related stuff that was failing and causing apt
to bail on the kernel update.

“So far, so good… I tried compiling in a driver for a usb wifi adapter (Realtek 8821au) from a couple of sources and neither worked,”

Back to enabling wifi; I tried compiling the driver for a different usb wifi adapter, and that also didn't work, but I was able to get a
couple more error messages and started wpa_suplicant by hand, tracked down the problem to a missing hook for wpa_suplicant:
/usr/lib/dhcpcd/dhcpcd-hooks/10-wpa_supplicant -> /usr/share/dhcpcd/hooks/10-wpa_supplicant

Once that was created, using the original driver and adapter, I'm up on both wlan0 & eth0 (yes, bridging two lans).

Chris