EDIT EDIT: I GOT IT! After going through all these motions and boiling it all down to something else, maybe specific to my hardware, I did some more googling, specifically "AMD 5800h Retroarch will not launch using vulkan", and I came across this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/1aelvdm/mini_pc_ryzen_7_5800h_vulkan_suddenly_not_working/. The solution was going to Windows Settings and the Applications menu and uninstalling the application "OpenCL™, OpenGL®, and Vulkan® Compatibility Pack". As soon as I uninstalled that application RetroArch launched just fine with configs set for vulkan as the video driver.
