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Would guess it's a data type problem. Is it 9 or "9"? I'm a big fan of https://www.puppet.com/docs/puppet/7/function.html#versioncmp for just this sort of reason.

would make sense, but not sure why 3 other hosts have been fine

What do you get when you output the value of $facts['os']['release']['major']? I would first guess there's something wrong with what is being returned as the value of that fact.

oh it's one host out of several with the issue. I'd try to see what the data looks like. Something like

$test = $facts['os']['release']['major']
if $test =~ Integer {
  notify { "os.major is Integer and value is ${test}": }
} elsif $test =~ String {
  notify { "os.major is String and value is ${test}": }
}

'9' - would be correct in my test class here. It is a string. and it was '9' in my original problem class for my yum repos. So I go back and add this ^ $test block. And it then runs properly on the host... and gives me the rhel 9 repos... arggh. same happened with my autofs config. made what shouldn't be a significant change (added a comment within an if block in the template. and boom it worked as expected

Just for future reference you can confirm the types of core facts at https://www.puppet.com/docs/puppet/8/core_facts.html

yep, version is a string. stepped on windows with major release

2012 R2