When the first stage of a newly created pipeline is ansiblePlaybook the workspace is not created and the pipeline fails immediately with "workspace does not exist"  
Preceeding this first stage with an arbitrary stage that forces a workspace to be created alleviates this issue. 

Repro steps
Create new pipeline with never before used name: I.e. "Pipelineforansiblestage1test" 
pipeline {
agent any
environment

{ win_creds = credentials('jenkinswincreds') }
stages {
stage('winrm') {
steps { ansiblePlaybook( playbook: '/data/ansible/ansiblemaster/winrm_prep.yml', inventory: '$jenkinsrawlist,', extras: '-e \"windows_username=$win_creds_USR windows_password=$win_creds_PSW ansible_username=$win_creds_USR\"') }
}

}

notice that this job fails with error no workspace exists. 

WORKAROUND:
pipeline {
agent any
environment{ win_creds = credentials('jenkinswincreds') }

stages {
stage('Opening Workspace') {
steps {
script

{ def date = new Date() def data = "Hello World\nSecond line\n" + date writeFile(file: 'workspacecreated.txt', text: data) sh "ls -l" }

}
}
stage('winrm') {
steps

{ ansiblePlaybook( playbook: '/data/ansible/ansiblemaster/winrm_prep.yml', inventory: '$jenkinsrawlist,', extras: '-e \"windows_username=$win_creds_USR windows_password=$win_creds_PSW ansible_username=$win_creds_USR\"', installation: "Ansible-2.11.3") }

}

 

The above job succeeds as the writefile stage creates a workspace.