Latest posts

Hi,
I have a static homepage and I’d like to display the latest posts on the homepage, among other things. I’ve added the ‘latest posts’ block (is there another way to do this?) but I’m running into 2 issues:
1. I’ve set the latest posts block to wide width (grid view). However, it displays as full width. Basically, there is no difference between wide width and full width. I’m thinking there’s some interference here with the theme maybe?
2. I’d like to display the featured image as 2:1 ratio, so the featured image of the latest posts plugin have the same ration I set for the featured image on archive pages. Is this possible?
Thanks!