@Tom-Elliott Hellooooo,
Sooooo, leaving the UUIDs as is I simply decided to use a different machine to create the image. I was using Intel and switched to a SuperMicro and set BIOS booting option to BOTH meaning Legacy + UEFI.
That same image was successfully deployed to that very problem Intel box as well as others. And since it was EXT4, the partition grew and shrunk as needed.