How do I make Pins the first row on the home screen?

You mean where the "resent" tiles are? You can't. Pins can only be placed below that.

There is no way to get rid of the advertisements on your home screen. If you highlight an ad, press the menu button on your controller then click on show me less. But you can't do this on every ad. The only thing you can do is make tiles transparent
and not to pin games to the home screen.

Simply name your first group pins and apply it to the top of your home screen. As far as the guide goes, instead of tabbing over to it like the old way you simply click groups and it is right there at the top (named pins) as your first group. I am absolutely
not trying to make light of your complaint just that there really isn't that drastic of a difference with the new update and to the contrary it allows for far greater customization than before.

You add a row for most used apps however all but two pin groups (including quick resume ffs) for apps and games that I actually use are gone and buried? Those were my most used apps. Thanks.

A row for most played, a row for trending, new games, popular on game pass, Bethesda, Warzone, & Overwatch, plus multiple others. Why not just make the home screen the store then remove the store app completely? Your new UI is a cluttered mess of advertisements upon advertisements. I’d prefer to go to the store when I’m shopping and leave the home screen my own experience. I was looking forward to the new UI and am severely disappointed. Surprisingly the one spot I used to check to spend money before heading to the store “Deals with gold” appears to be gone. All this wouldn’t bother me so much if you restored the ability to remove, hide, reorder, resize your advertisements and restore all my pin groups to home.

Now that MS owns almost every game studio they no longer feel the need to give the customers what they want it seems.

I'm having the same exact problem, all of my pins do not show up on the home screen.