Anbernic 35xx moving away from stock

Looking for some advice here, I'm out to complete two things:

1. restore saves from the games I played using the stock firmware to GarlicOS
2. get two player/two controllers working for couch gaming over HDMI

Specifics: I picked up a 16G microSD for the OS, and a 64G for ROMs, pulled the original (kinda garbage) SD and replaced it with the 16G that I loaded with GarlicOS. I copied the relevant roms that I loaded onto the original SD to the new set and moved the save files ( .sav) over to the saves folder in the relevant subfolder.
Launching the game results in a blank save. I can't continue the save.

For dual controller/two player, I haven't tested HDMI yet (on the list) I'm just trying to get controllers working at the moment; I have an Anker USB 3 hub. What works right now, is if I plug my Stadia controller in, it gets picked up, no problem. but my xbox controller will mess everything up. If I just do my OTG adapter to the stadia controller, it works, OTG to hub to stadia, no problem. If I either go OTG to the xbox controller, or OTG to hub to controller, it does not come up in GarlicOS. If I plug OTG to hub to both controller, neither shows up. I added waitForUSB (I also tried waitforUSB) file to the OS SD card, with no effect (the file still exists).

With stock, I was able to use a controller (just the stadia controller), over USB OTG with HDMI, so I know that works, and it should still work.
The Xbox Controller I'm using is almost brand new, it's an XBOX One controller, connected by a USB A to C cable, I picked up 10ft cables from Anker for the purpose. I'm fine with wired, but I also have a USB xbox wireless dongle for PC that I can't seem to find right now, and I'm wondering if that would do any better (and I would prefer this since it would be wireless).

Does anyone have any hits or tricks or information related to this that I can use to push this along? is the new series of xbox controllers not compatible? do I need to change the drivers or something to make it work better? I'm new to retroArch, and GarlicOS, and the 35xx is my first dedicated retro handheld. I'm refreshingly not new to linux or SBC's, so I'm very comfortable with making changes and taking chances. All my saves are archived on that original SD card, and I have a backup on my laptop, so I'm not worried about losing saves or data at all. If the controllers are not viable, I'm sure I can find something that works and pick that up, maybe something from 8bitdo.

Thanks in advance.