Updating post for progress for myself if need to remember and if anyone else has the same question. If you have a better approach, please post.

Never did figure out symlinks, but extracted firefox to a new directory that I created called apps and then a firefox directory was created, right clicked and copied the firefox application from the extract directory, then right click on desktop then create new / short-cut. Launches fine.

Haven't figured out how to use the FireFox icon, but launches fine.