In Ansible, replace the use of `with_items` by `loop` with a list of dictionaries defined in-line

In old-style Ansible, I used to use with_items together with dictionaries. To given potential examples:

- name: deploy files
  template:
    src: "files/{{ item.src }}"
    dest: "{{ item.dest }}"
  with_items:
    - {src: 'foo', dest: "/path/to/somewhere"}
    - {src: 'bar', dest: "/somewhere/else"}
    - {src: 'baz', dest: "/different/path/"}


- name: Install packages
  npm:
    name: '{{ item.name }}'
    version: '{{ item.version }}'
  with_items:
    - {src: 'foo', version: '1.0'}
    - {src: 'bar', version: '1.5'}
    - {src: 'baz', version: '1.2'}

These days we are supposed to use loop. if trying as a drop-in replacement, this would be like

- name: deploy files
  template:
    src: "files/{{ item.src }}"
    dest: "{{ item.dest }}"
  loop:
    - {src: 'foo', dest: "/path/to/somewhere"}
    - {src: 'bar', dest: "/somewhere/else"}
    - {src: 'baz', dest: "/different/path/"}

wihch fails with

TASK [deploy files] ************
fatal: [host]: FAILED! => {
    "msg": "'src_path' is undefined"
}

Indeed, the migration guide (and StackOverflow answers such as Ansible: iterate over a list of dictionaries - loop vs. with_items) do say and boil down to “use flatten” for dictionaries. But this assumes that the list of dicts is stored in a variable. But what if it is not as it is defined in-line? Do I just have to move the data to a named variable?

EDIT: for an attempt with drop-in replacement.