Actually, after all that above, I think My Tasks with Custom Sections may work fine!
I can see from this thread I need to create rules to move them into Today, Later, Upcoming etc (or custom sections) New tasks automatically move to Later section in My Tasks. I am optimistic that this is going to be a great alternative to what I was asking for as it will let me do a number of other things I do too.
I have not used the My tasks section for YEARS because back when I did it did not have the customisation I needed, and I never knew its been improved since then!
Thanks