>> Did this. Fusion "blinks" at me, but no machine gets opened/created.

Can you explain what you mean by "it blinks at me"? Did the virtual machine attempt to start and do nothing, or did the open fail on the copy of the VM?

>> I only see a single vmx.lck - I guess this is locked.   Can I just remove the .lck?

Make sure the Fusion Application is shut down first. Then if a '.lck' file remains, you can delete it. But perform this on the copy you restored, not the backup copy.

What's the Mac hardware and macOS version you're using?

Also if you could zip up and attach a copy of the vmware-vmfusion.log file found in your account's "Library/Logs/VMware Fusion" folder that might give us a clue as to what's going on.

Another thought- make sure something hasn't messed with the permissions of your temp directory. Can you drop into Terminal and issue the following and post the result:

ls -ald /private/tmp