I guess whoever suggested a fresh win11 install did not see that i need to migrate the existing Win 10 system. a clean Win 11 install, would have wiped out all my data and applications. I did not want to go through this.
So I finally figured it out. Go to BIOS and disable the Pluton processor. Enable ASP fTPM under SOC options. (the default settings are auto - not compatible with Win10 for the in place upgrade).
After this the TPM 2.0 device shows up in the Device Manager and The Win11 upgrade check passes.

After the migration I can re-enable Pluton for whatever advanced functionality it offers.