Hi kk,
Not out of the box. The assumption is that text-only tiles will always show the text straight away. The hover effect were born as a way to display the image unobstructed by the text. However, I can see that text-only tiles with a hover effect could be nice in places too. I see 2 solution:
1. The hacky one: Give your tiles a 1px color featured image. Then that color image will be used as the background for the tile. Now it’s no longer a text-only tile, and can you use all the hover effects
2. The more coding one: CSS your own hover effects. Check the current WP Tiles scss to see how the hover effects are set up, and apply them to text-only tiles in your (child)theme stylesheet.
Good luck!
— Mike