To finalize this issue:
Relaunching the game fixed the issue with the character movement
Rebinding camera control via console fixed the camera issue.
I now believe that these are not related to each other and are indeed separate, since I most likely caused the camera issue when I did...
Found a fix to the mouse/camera control not working here: https://project8.dev/threads/found-2-bugs-the-first-disables-recoil-and-the-second-unbinds-mouse-turns.3865/
console commands to return camera control:
bind "X_AXIS" "rightleft"
bind "Y_AXIS" "!forwardback"
bind "MOUSE_X" "yaw"
bind...
Not sure if these are related but concidering at least the +right and +left commands didn't trigger an unknown command prompt, but was able to get stuck at the start of the game.
Tried to use +right / +left commands in the console while in the lobby trying to make the player model turn around...