In Mint, from the start menu you can right click on the app you want to run and from the drop down menu you can select to launch with dedicated GPU. Otherwise left clicking will launch with the integrated GPU as normal.
From the other comments, it looks like it may be an ubuntu issue so I’ll consider another distribution and maybe things will run a bit smoother in general.
You indirectly answered another question that got lost in my head. I’ll add those commands to my cheat sheet so I can attempt to diagnose problems myself in the future.