I got the above method to work but I really didn't want to have to have python2 installed on my system if I could avoid it to keep things clean and prevent other software from trying to use it.

After trying to sort this out for way too long in Ubuntu 24.04, using VS Code, I was able to get debugging functioning with an esp32-s3 by installing the libpython3-all-dev and libpython3-all-dbg packages.