Yup, just get SE. Mods need to be updated to work with the Anniversary Edition, and a lot of authors haven’t done that yet. You’ll need to downgrade SE, but there’s an easy tool to do just that.

If you wanted to buy Special Edition for Steam, GMG (key seller with great reputation) has it on sale for roughly US$9.

I’d recommend the Steam version. But don’t bother with AE; Special Edition has better mod support.