You should be able to do this on Plasma with Activities.
+1 for Activities, it can do this (and more). https://www.datamation.com/open-source/11-activities-for-kde-plasma/
Would this mean switching to Kubuntu? (still kinda new to this world)
It can mean that, but you can also install it on normal Ubuntu.
For the whole enchilada, sudo apt install kde-full
If youre going to be switching distros anyways, I recommend tuxedoOS, it's based on Ubuntu but does a few thing to make it a better experience.
Ever looked in to window managers?
No, what's that?
Workspaces? Don't recall if it has its own icons
https://www.maketecheasier.com/how-to-work-with-workspaces-gnome/
Thought about creating another user?
Yeaaaah, likely the route I'll take.
I'm pretty sure you can do it on Trinity and XFCE
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0