I think I found the solution but I don’t like it. I signed in to the Xbox app for Xbox Cloud Gaming. After doing this, the Gaming page in the hub no longer shows my recently played Xbox games in that place. This means I still don’t get the Apps and Devices row to be the default row. Plus that Xbox app is terrible for me, the cloud gaming literally unplayable in that the Play button for any given game stays disabled even after taking like 10 seconds to just “load” the button.

I did manage to trick it into having my Xbox Series X source on the main home page instead of the Game page though so that’s close to a win.