Hi, Nicholas. Thanks for your interest in our plugin suite.
You wouldn’t need to use one of our plugin’s widgets or shortcodes (which require Events Calendar PRO) for this purpose because we automatically create yoursite.com/events for the archive.
You might try playing with this setting: wp-admin > Events > Settings > Display tab > “Events template” option — to see if changing it makes things work better for you.
Last but not least, we have Bundles and a pretty great Refund Policy so you can buy one or many of our add-ons and thoroughly test them.
I hope this info helps. Let me know if you have any follow-up questions.