By default, desktop Ubuntu enables almost all drivers in the kernel, which means most things work when you plug them in. By contrast, Linux4Tegra disables many device drivers, to save space, and then you have to re-enable and re-build them if you need them.
USB device drivers don’t need architecture-specific code (i e, x86-specific code) so there’s good hope that all you need to do is enable the various USB WiFi driver modules that are available in the kernel, re-build those modules, and install them on your Jetson to make it work.