How would I get my character rotation to match the gamepad stick orientation?

Sorry, I could not find the original code. Anyway it was pure unrelascript and may not be applicable here.

So try this:
Bind an AxisMapping on right anologue stick to ‘CharacterFacing’. Now you can create an event node Character Facing in blueprint. It will have an input value ranging from 1 to -1. You can use that to decide the rotation of your character.
But you should not use the value right away. YOu only need the sign of the value. IF the sign chages, then you set the rotation of charcter (but dont feed it into Move Input. or it will rotate for ever).