Always On Availability Groups on single VM
I definitely understand the comments from Lee and Rodrigo, and really appreciate you pointing me at those additional resources.  I think your observations are generally correct.
However, I have discovered an approach that may bear fruit on this endeavor.  Rafael Rodriguez has accomplished this through the use of Docker Containers.  He has an article about how he did this AOAG Read-Scale Clusterless.
He also has the entire project in a git repository.
I downloaded it and fired it up in Docker on my Win10 workstation.  I was able to connect to both instances from SSMS, add a table to the primary and then see it show up in the secondary replica!
I think this essentially answers this question.  My next step is to set up the particulars of my use case, and determine a testing strategy to get benchmarks and performance improvement data.  I will try to circle back and post any results.
Thanks to everyone for helping me move forward on this project!  Merry Christmas!!!