There's some confusion in the documentation vs observation, can you clarify?
The ESP documentation page linked for "essential policies and apps are applied" describes previously understood and tested behavior where, all device assigned apps will still get installed, but ESP simply doesn't track apps that are not on the Blocked Apps list.
Example from the link:
The apps that are included in this list are used by Intune to filter the list that should be considered blocking. It doesn't specify what apps should be installed. For example, if you configure this list to include "App 1," "App 2," and "App 3" and "App 3" and "App 4" are targeted to the device or user, the ESP will track only "App 3." "App 4" will still be installed, but the ESP will not wait for it to complete.
The Blocking apps behavior seems to have changed; instead of ESP simply not tracking apps that are assigned to devices but not on the Blocked Apps list, the IME Agent actively queries only apps on the Blocked List (or all apps if no Blocked Apps are defined) and only installs those apps during Device Setup phase.
The remaining apps will skip the User OOBE phase and install sometime after the user gets to their desktop but it's not immediate, it seems to happen on the next few IME agent policy syncs (minutes to hours later).
https://call4cloud.nl/2021/06/those-magnificent-drivers-in-their-flying-microsoft-store-or-how-i-flew-from-the-enrolment-status-page-to-paris-in-25-hours-11-minutes/#part3 and this has been confirmed with Win10 and Win11 testing with pre-provisioning.