Oddity of selecting vertices in Blender via python script

Okay so if you read into python scripting examples of moving vertices around in Blender, it seems whether using a bpy.context or bpy.data call to a given object and its corresponding vertices, you can resort to updating these without any problems.  On the other hand while you can see if for a given selected object, its given vertices are selected (in 'Edit' mode), it appears that changing a given selection status is another matter.  Technically you can change these but apparently relation between context and object are not given systemically in a way that translates to any related operator command.  Thus if you wanted to select particular vertices in adding these to a given vertex group via operator command, for instance, it appears that an operator based assignment process is a no go.

There is a work around that I've found at the moment, albeit slightly circuitous in updating a given set of vertices in so far as selection.

#example to select a vertex
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action = 'DESELECT')  #deselecting vertices

#nextline ensures that we have an updated representation of selected vertices
bpy.context.object.update_from_editmode() 
me = bpy.context.object.data
bm = bmesh.new()   # create an empty BMesh
bm.from_mesh(me)   # fill it in from a Mesh

bm.verts[0].select_set(True)
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'OBJECT')
bm.to_mesh(me)
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')

Presuming there is a vertex, for instance, in the zeroth container position to be selected for a given mesh object, this sets the vertex of the object to a selection true case.