I've got a T480s that has 40GB of RAM (32GB SODIMM + 8GiB soldered). Works fine. Is the T480 different?
OTOH unofficially T480 (not S) can work with two 32 GB SODIMMs. I did not try that.
(I wish the AMD-based thinkpads supported ECC RAM. Ryzen 7 mobile CPUs technically allow for that.)