To wrap this up, I was able to get this to work. This is all that I needed in this particular case:
vtkNew<vtkCellDataToPointData> c2p;
c2p->SetInputData(ugrid);
vtkNew<vtkContourFilter> contour;
contour->SetInputConnection(0, c2p->GetOutputPort(0));
Of course there is other code, but this is the essentials to the question that I asked.
I’ve a follow on to this I’ll put in another post.