Cool so I went over all that last night and found I was doing exactly those things already.
The code image above is from my Character. As the documentation tells us to do when player state owns the Ability Component, we should initialize it in PossessedBy and in OnRep_PlayerState, which the code shows is being done.
This code is running and delving into the InitAbilityActorInfo method, should be setting an avatarActor variable to the character class (the second parameter, or “this” in the image).
However… something is happening somewhere else to turn this to the Player Controller.
And thus I will dig around to see if I can’t find the call that is leading to this happening. I appreciate your starting point - it has been very helpful.