[SOLVED]
For my very lightweight cd-type of use-case, this bug got fixed and I let TC do all the work. It also served a secondary valuable purpose!
1) Use as-is, offline, and implement the right-hand scrollbar. Persistence on another filesystem. Good enough when I just want to enjoy TC as-is.
2) For going online for a small handful of utilities, like terminus-fonts, htop, flwm-topside and the like, this "problem" was easily fixed and quite useful.
/** Lurker note - this is for me with very small requirements - anything much larger like trying to turn TC into a major system, will be best served by using official installer utilities, or making your own system from the distribution file themselves.
**/
3) Although I've established persistence with a tce directory on a remote filesystem, and proven that it works with a small test-file, full population of that remote tce structure does not take place until you download something.
4) Although flwm is already running, and does not appear in the onboot.lst nor in the apps / onboot maintenance window, but fortunately simply downloading it also causes the remote tce directory structure to be populated, permissions set and so forth.
5) After reboot, with the system picking up the tce directory first, picks it up from my tce directory, and not the cde
6) I used the apps utility to also move any other tcz's into the onboot.lst file with onboot maintenance in Apps - basically pointing them away from the cde directory to the new tce so they get picked up from there first.
And of course flwm-topside, when installed works fine, now that flwm is part of the onboot.lst proper.
Anyway, it works for my use-case, and if it breaks, I get to keep both pieces!
So Rich - thanks for pointing me to FLWM. We can call this SOLVED!