Is there a Win utility that is as easy? I’ve tried 3-4 but have struggle to make short recordings of portions of the screen without a struggle.
I don't know about recording part of your screen, though, I haven't tried it so I don't know if it's possible with the built in functionality. I'd probably go for OBS but that's far from easy to work with.
Instead, I opened up a Windows VM in Parallels on my MBA and did a quick screen recording with Quicktime. No Microsoft (or other) logins needed.
Its settings are in the Xbox app somewhere, but you don't need to sign in for that part: you can simply close the popup, or accept the defaults (like storing the videos in your user folder instead of somewhere else).
To use it, hit Win+G to open up the game bar and hit the record button. Alternatively, you can start/stop recording immediately with Win+alt+R.
The various releases of Windows 10 aren't different licenses, they're similar to Apple's OS X releases: iterative improvements within the same code base, with new features and such.