Since that last update, my home page isn't showing up every time I start up Microsoft Edge.
This is a bug affecting a few users. The Edge team reported on 29 November::
This is a known issue and is fixed in 97.0.1057.0 but not quite moved up to Stable yet. Our Insiders who've had the same thing happening have reported it resolved, so you're welcome to give an Insider build a try if you'd like (Canary and Dev have the fix.) Or, I'll check back in with you after that build is in Stable and make sure the fix is working for you!
Alexandra doesn't make clear whether this fix is incorporated into one of the builds 1055-1057 or into the major update to Edge 97, but if it's the latter, the the expected Stable release date for Edge 97 is next month: