Wow. After continuous digging, an answer was discovered! I don’t know about Lutris, it’s still being weird and not launching but here is a strange Steam bug with a more strange workaround:
This happens because non-steam shortcuts do not support dependencies on compatibility tools, so the shortcuts are being started without any dependency checks and then fail.
The steam client will provide more detailed error information when this and similar situations happen moving forward.
Until the steam client supports dependencies for non-steam shortcuts, a workaround is to start a steam game that uses steamplay configured with the same proton version as your non-steam shortcut, or to manually install the needed compatibility tools (“Proton 6.3” and “SteamLinuxRuntime - soldier” for instance).
Found that here and problem solved! I sincerely appreciate the advice and help all have provided in this conversation, hopefully if someone else comes across this with Steam at least, then maybe this will be a benefit.