Hey Mark!
First, awesome workaround. I had to do a similar hidden type thing for setting pagination values so it's neat to see others finding creative ways to get things done.
Second, have you tried to get the value property out from the tabs.data array? I was able to map these using a variable array with a name property like this:
...and used that as the source for my Tab component:
After that, the button is able to call upon the value of the data to use by name, which seems to trigger the UI to update the active tab:
Depending on how you are setting up these buttons, I am pretty sure you can target whatever you need once you know the index/key.