Newsroom Template Query Loop select PAGES

I've been using Genesis StudioPress for a long time and working on migrating my main site to GPP and GBP with the Newsroom Template.

The site is 90% pages of evergreen content and the rest about 40 posts in a couple categories. In Genesis I build my front page with three main sections with Genesis Blocks Pro - the first and second are selected pages, and the last section consists of posts from two categories.

The Newsroom Template has the front page containers devoted to posts so I change the first two to grab PAGES with the query loop but I find it not intuitive contrasted to Genesis Blocks Pro. In Genesis I can start to type the title of a page and it automatically comes up but not so with GPP and Newsroom.

I have tried using the SEARCH parameter with keywords and it kind of works.

Is there a way to specify exactly what pages I can include in the query loop, something like how Genesis does it? Image attached for reference.