ok, I found https://github.com/noyesno/awka so it is possible, though it uses it's own lib to link against - I don't know how much of that is based on AWK C vs original code.

Awk has many interpreters and some compilers. awka is an awk compiler. lawk is an awk-JIT.

hence "compile" in quotes, and mention of AWK-lib instead of AWK. Ultimately, interpreted AWK will still call compiled machine code, no?