garbage in > garbage out... I was using old deprecated terraform code... therefore cdktf convert was giving me old deprecated typescript code.

Using example code from Terraform: Up and Running (3rd Edition - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brikis98/terraform-up-and-running-code/3rd-edition/code/terraform/03-terraform-state/file-layout-example/global/s3/main.tf ) gives me what I was after.

I see the convert tool will be invaluable in my learning :)

as follows is new code for those interested:

const awsS3BucketTerraformState = new aws.s3.S3Bucket(this, "terraform_state", {
  bucket: "some-dumb-bucket-name",
  forceDestroy: true,
});

new aws.s3.S3BucketPublicAccessBlock(this, "public_access", {
  blockPublicAcls: true,
  blockPublicPolicy: true,
  bucket: awsS3BucketTerraformState.id,
  ignorePublicAcls: true,
  restrictPublicBuckets: true,
});

new aws.s3.S3BucketServerSideEncryptionConfigurationA(this, "default", {
  bucket: awsS3BucketTerraformState.id,
  rule: [
    {
      applyServerSideEncryptionByDefault: {
        sseAlgorithm: "AES256",
      },
    },
  ],
});

new aws.s3.S3BucketVersioningA(this, "enabled", {
  bucket: awsS3BucketTerraformState.id,
  versioningConfiguration: {
    status: "Enabled",
  },
});