I’m talking about the section that appears near the bottom of each individual blog post. I don’t usually use featured images for my articles, so all the image swatches in that section just look weird.
Is it possible to customize how that section is displayed, or do I just need to add featured images to my workflow?
I think that if you change the type of blog page it should be gone. You can also go to the widgets section and remove the widget on the bottom or change it to another one.
Yes, you can modify the layout of the related posts in wp-contentthemesenfoldincludesrelated-posts.php. Eg if you want to replace the image with the post title replace
$output .= " <a href='".get_permalink($related_post->ID)."' class='relThumWrap noLightbox'>n";
$output .= " <span class='related_image_wrap' data-avia-related-tooltip="". htmlspecialchars ( $related_post->post_title )."">";
$output .= $image;
$output .= " <span class='related-format-icon avia-font-entypo-fontello {$extra_class}'><span class='related-format-icon-inner'>".$avia_config['font_icons'][$format]."</span></span>";
$output .= " </span>";
$output .= " </a>";
with
$output .= " <a href='".get_permalink($related_post->ID)."' class='relThumWrap noLightbox'>n";
$output .= $related_post->post_title;
$output .= " </a>";