I figured I'd build my own UI to solve that, so I did. It's here: https://geevee.netlify.app/.
A benefit it has over a native GitLab UI is that it downloads and caches the project/group hierarchy in local storage (it's entirely client side), and can be refreshed on demand. It groups variables by environment mask and gives you a view of the entire variable hierarchy for a project.
Maybe some others might find it useful :)