populate a page with category postings?

I have a couple pages that display a single categories posts. The reason is that I want the link in the main navigation bar, and I want the posts to respond to the settings in AWP and I did not want to make extra templates. I suppose this would be easy if wordpress supported multiple blog pages. Is that something that is coming?

I was using the code:
<?php
if (is_page(50)) {
query_posts(“cat=12”);
}?>
<?php
if (is_page(74)) {
query_posts(“cat=3”);
}?>

before the loop on page.php/ custom templates and everything worked just fine. I just left the two pages blank and they made the equivalent of additional blog pages but somewhere around 2.3.x and 2.5 it broke but I did not notice when….

it still displays the posts but only the first 2(because I have my install set to display 2 posts per page). When I click ‘keep looking’, page 2, 3, etc. display the same posts and does not advance. funny thing is that the child page navigation menu shows the first post from the next page : ) Obviously it is an issue if the posts do not advance with the pages.

I deactivated all the plugins and there is no change in behavior. As well, when the above code is removed, it works fine so the theme ( vertigo 2.0 3 column ) is fine.

for now, I solved the problem by using the ‘postlists 2.0’ plugin. However the displayed posts do not respond to AWP.

Thank you in advance for your help.