After some digging, I found out why the characters looked different.
The base Genesis 8 Female model was borked for me, and all characters are tied to the base model.
The model on the left is how the base model should look, the one on the right is how my base model looked:
Now all characters have been "reset" and their faces have returned to normal:
would be nice if you allowed us to set the age of Lauren instead of restricting it to a preset minimum age. Originally we had that flexibility.
Umm, if I remember right, you can still change this if that is your choice.
You can change her (an others) ages in the character menu: https://subscribestar.adult/posts/1115668