Note: You might notice that the format of the json for the Grafana Dashboard is not as human readable when created by the operator vs when created from a template.
After discussion with David Ffrench who is doing something similar in Keycloak this is not an issue.
The format is less human readable in the cr but I've verified that the export from Grafana of the dahsboard by json is human readable regardless of whether the format in the cr is human readable or not.
Example when created from Template

Example when created by the operator

Export of json from grafana dashboard when created by template

Export of json from grafana dashboard when created by operator