Yes to setting “Customize->Settings->Landing Page->Featured Content” to disabled. All text areas are set to disabled. Also, text areas show differently than the way the home page title shows so I don’t think it is the text areas setting that is driving this issue… this seems like a bug.
I can take the same approach noted in the response from behind13 above – but I’d rather understand why this is happening so I can eliminate the issue and not have the extra landing page space.