How to display categories on the front page
You can display the categories by placing the widgets for the categories in dashboard / widget / sticky widget.
Excerpt cannot be displayed in ‘Category New Post widget’ attached to the theme
You’ll probably need to enable WordPress 5.6.1 and the gutenberg plugin to get the look you want.
Gutenberg – WordPress plugin | www.ads-software.com
After enabling the plugin, you will see the Latest Posts widget.
Place the widget in the sticky widget area.
On the right side of the edit screen, there is an item to specify the category, so specify the category.
Then open the customizer and add a little CSS to customize it to look nice
.sticky-widget .wp-block-latest-posts__list li{
overflow:hidden;
margin-bottom:1.5rem;
border-bottom:1px solid #ccc;
}
.sticky-widget .wp-block-latest-posts__list .wp-block-latest-posts__featured-image{
float:left;
}
.sticky-widget .wp-block-latest-posts__list .wp-block-latest-posts__featured-image ~ a {
margin-left:165px;
}
.sticky-widget .wp-block-latest-posts__list .wp-block-latest-posts__featured-image ~ .wp-block-latest-posts__post-excerpt {
margin-left:165px;
}
example
https://www.tenman.info/wp3/manualraindrops/files/esample.png
Thank you.