This is intentional, as an empty homepage is not a typical user scenario. You can hide the categories label via custom CSS, or custom JS if you want to hide it only when there are no categories.
The static page plugin is deprecated in favour of the kitchen sink demo (although its not even close to being a "kitchen sink" yet, just has 3-4 examples so far). The relevant library in your case can be found here, let me know if you run into any issues.
