2.8 was game changer, i used to hate blender, i now love it! the UI upgrade changed everything!
Also, the way UV editing selection works is rough. If you don't have a face selected in the model, it simply does not show up in the UV. The UV has its own selection. So in order to single out a part of the UV based on a set of faces you need to first select the faces, remember where in the UV map they live, then select the whole model again, then select the UV points again.
Blender, Inkscape, Krita and GIMP are all good software that can compete with paid alternatives, but only Blender was successful at making modern UI that gives you fast comfortable workflow.