I saw another thread about this, but it was marked as Solved, this feature is not solved at all.
The featured section on my store is inherently broken. I have deleted all the of the listings in that section and days later it is still there. I e-mailed support and I got the most infuriating canned responses from them. I'm a technical person so I know this is all a bug in the system that they have no desire to fix.
FWIW, this is the last response I got from the support team, basically admitting it's broken but that it isn't a priority to fix:
"Hello Chris!
We really appreciate you taking the time to alert us to this issue. We understand that it can be frustrating when things aren't working as expected. While we definitely see the value in addressing this, it's not something we're able to prioritize at the moment. Unfortunately, we don't have a timeline for when a fix might be implemented.
Rest assured, your feedback is valuable to us, and we'll keep it in mind as we plan future updates and improvements.
Thanks again for reaching out! "
Just wow.