Moving from iCloud to Dropbox

So, I made a bonehead move.

I am switching from iCloud Drive to Dropbox and have moved what I thought were ALL of my files from iCloud Drive over to Dropbox only to later get an email from letting me know that there were a number of ".iCloud" files in my Dropbox which are actually placeholders for where iCloud deleted the native file in order to optimize storage. Now, I have a bunch of "placeholder files" and no way to access any of the original iCloud files.

I have very briefly looked at iCloud Drive archives in my TimeMachine and see that the placeholder files go way back. How can I recover them?

Frustrated, so I'm having a hard time thinking clearly. Thanks for your help!

Stephen