SWWAP

You can,however, use 'Group Promotions' to move a user to a group or add them to a secondary group based on the value of a completed profile field.

You describe correctly how it works. The categories and the feed blocks in 4.x come with only one stock template and that uses this kind of generic “forum listing” mode. Pages allows for custom templates to be created (or installed) for those sections, but that would be a custom job. There is no other “easy solution”. Maybe things change in 5.x.

I'll start by stating that the version of Pages I am using is about two years old. (v4.4.10) That said, I can't find anything that suggests it's any better now. I'll explain...
I've been an Invision user for probably 18+ years now. I really love most aspects of it. But there's one specific reoccurring theme that always drives me insane. Some very basic layout features that so many other suites offer are just absent from Invision.
Here's my number one example, with Pages...
1a. There is no way that I can find to easily change the layout of articles as they show within categories. I want the list of articles within a category to look like they do when you actually click on them. Not truncated versions that you need to click "Read More" to see. This has been a feature of practically every one of the dozens of other CMS systems I've tried. Why isn't that something I can do easily here!?
1b. On that same note, if I want to show 'featured' articles in a block on my homepage, the only way I can find to do that easily is with a feed of article 'titles'. I don't want just clickable titles, I want these featured articles to show in their full glory just as I described above. Full untruncated articles. Why is this so hard!?
I've done SO MUCH searching for solutions to this over the years and now I find myself falling down the same rabbit hole yet again....
"invision power show full articles in category view"
"...show full articles in blocks"
...etc...
I have found so many other people that have similar needs. I've found very few solutions, and they've all been only 'kind of' like what I've wanted and never really laid out in a very easy to follow way. My ADHD cannot handle so many small breadcrumb sized clues over dozens of pages of discussion, partial solutions that needs so much tweaking, etc. Can anyone please (PLEASE I'M BEGGING) point me to an easy to follow solution for this? Thank you!!!

We would need to look further into this for you, however the access details on file appear to be incorrect or missing. Could you please update these details by visiting your client area, selecting the relevant purchase, then clicking "Review/Update Access Information" under the "Stored Access Information" section. 
We look forward to further assisting you. 
 

Making sure the files have correct permissions would be advised as well. Please keep in mind that the following directories need to be writable either through permissions or user/groups. If you run suPHP or suexec, the permission would be 755 for folders and 644 for files. Otherwise, that can varying depending on your setup.
applications datastore plugins uploads and all sub-folders of uploads  
Would advise hiring a server administrator if you feel that there are any knowledge gaps to ensure that you server is setup correctly. I'm afraid, hosting support is outside our scope of support.

A manual upgrade worked in the end. Thanks again.

A manual upgrade worked in the end. Thanks again.