Problem solved. For anybody else facing this, the likely problem is that your rendering is happening so slowly that your FPS is getting messed up.
In my case, I was rendering a high-resolution image sequence. Switching to a video produced animations at the right speed. Reducing the resolution on the images also produced the right speed.
Anybody switching from Unity might expect that all animations in the camera view will slow down to wait for the renderer to draw the whole frame before progressing animations. UE does not do this.
I also tried adding each character to the timeline as an item in the sequence. This allowed me to do a bunch of neat stuff like decide exactly which animation frames would show when. But it didn’t solve this problem.
To anyone else that comes across this still having the same problem, these solutions didn’t work for me but I found my problem and solved it.
I remembered some time back when making my level sequence for VR that includes audio within the LS, I was having having issues with the audio skipping. I tried everything I could find and nothing worked. Low and behold after hours of searching, i forgot to do the most simple of all things… check my playback speed on the level sequence itself. Sure enough, I had it set at half-pace in the detail panel which was causing my audio glitch issue.
Fast forward to now a few months later, doing some cinematic shots getting readying for packaging/advertising I must have forgotten to reset one of the several changes that I made within the level sequence trying to fix the audio problem I was having because I discovered that if you click the FPS, then clock source, there are several options. I forgot to place mine back on Tick, I changed it audio. (One of the suggestions for my self-made issues months before).
Long story short, simply clicking FPS inside the level sequence - clock source - tick, fixed my animation problem. It wasn’t a problem within render queue. It was a self-created error separated from the screw up months before.