Need Help Selecting Emoji Categories

I'm experiencing a rather frustrating problem with the Emoji keyboard on iOS 26.5.2. When I bring up the keyboard, it seems to default to emojis for certain avatars such as "Ghost face". (At least that's what it shows when I move past the Emoji Search box.) At the bottom of the screen are buttons for various faces, but that's not what I want. Rather, I want to select a different category of emojis, such as Food and Drink, and can find that by getting to the bottom of the screen with a four-finger single tap, and swiping to the left until I get to that category. I find that I have to do this fairly quickly, however, as VO, for whatever reason, usually wants to jump to a different part of the screen, such as the Emoji Search box. Anyway, when I get to the category I want, I'll double-tap on it, but don't believe it's been selected as VO moves me somewhere else, and the stupid avatar emojis are still there! (I'm using this in Touch Typing mode at the moment.) Does anyone have any suggestions on getting around this annoying behavior?