I've resolved this issue.
The issue was with the Embedded Fonts/TextFormat vs Stage.focus.

Seemed that every time the stage.focus was applied to embedded/CSS formatted text field the defaultTextFormat ... as best as I can describe... reverted to a default. When the reversion and actual style clashed, Flash Player 9 decided it was best to show nothing.

I ended up storing my original assigned defaultTextFormat object in class with the textfield and reassigning it before the focus was applied to the TextField. That, while not ideal, fixed it.

JAWS notes for those interested -
stage.focus does work to change the screen reader to a Textfield that you want it to read. However, there can be timing lags. In my case it was because after the user pressed/interacted - it read what they pressed - and that's when my focus fired... I set a timer delay on the focus command and it fixed the problem.

-<>|TheMadFlasher|<>-