Elements 2022 Panorama Reposition

In Guided Edit>Photomerge>Panorama when selecting Reposition uncheck Blend Images Together under Settings.

Then you'll get separate layers.

@99jon, in my quick experiments with the GE, it seemed to me that the GE was trying to line up the images as if they were a true panorama and not a collage.  I used the Playbill images from the OPs screenshot and the program seemed to recognize that they had similar borders and tried to line up one of the single images with borders from the other 2 images. It (mistakenly?) cut out the centers of the Playbills perhaps because it was only trying to line up the edges.  Hence, what remained was the transparent pixels from those other images that I think you are describing.  I didn't try every configuration of the GE so I may be entirely wrong about that.

So, in the following screenshots, you will see that I have attempted a Panorama GE collage of 3 very different images.  The GE threw up a message that some images could not be automatically alligned.  The net result was that the basketball image became the base with the lizard placed in the middle, and the third baseball stadium image was almost entirely cropped out and hidden as the background layer.  It was possible to resposition each of the layers in Expert Mode.

I think the bottom line is that the panorama GE is not intended for true collages, but allows for panoramic collages of the same scene with different images lined up to form contiguous pixels where possible, but not necessarily in a rectangular result.

As I said, I don't have Elements 9 on my machine any more, so I am trying to understand why you think it was easier in creating a collage in that version.

You may want to look at the Collage Creator in Elements 2022.  It can create a collage with various templates and with a maximum of 8 images.  You can select your desired photos in the Organizer and then go to Create>Photo Collage.  The program will automatically create something like the following.  Once the collage has been created, you can edit it further in the Collage Creator (by moving around and resizing the photos or changing the background), or in the Expert mode of the Editor where you can change everything.

I think you must be in the Quick Mode which is the default upon installation.  Change to Expert Mode and you will be able to move each image around since they will each be a layer in the new file.

What do you mean by creating a Panorama in Elements 9?  The earliest version I have on my machine is Elements 10.

Elements 2022 can create a side-by-side collage of two images just as you have described.  If you want to create a collage of two 6x4 images, you could create a new file measuring 12x4 and drag, drop and position the two photos from the photo bin to the new file.  If you really want to create a true Panorama, you will find tools in the Guided Edit>Photomerge panel:

As with most things Photoshop, there are multiple other ways to accomplish what you want.