Subscriptions and Newsletters

I am trying to sync creative mail to the people list (populated by the JP subscribe widget. The documentation refers to the newsletter subscribe BLOCK but my theme (colormag) does not use blocks in footers, it uses widgets. The widget does capture the email (it does not have other fields) and these do go into the database once confirmation is received. However, These names do not sync with Creative Mail. CM settings show sync is selected. (note, sync does work with a sample ninja form, but of course this does not help since that does not sync with the WP database so I cannot use JP to autosend new posts to subscribers which is the whole point). CM help desk could not identify the issue. Is there something about using the widget vs block? If so, is there a way to convert the block to a widget (or insert a block into my footer via Appearance)?

Also: I don’t even see the Newsletter block AT ALL (at least in elementor; and if I switch to gutenberg, won’t it break all my pages/posts built with elementor?)