Bingo. I added the featured content template (as originally and later suggested by @user53340) to the page.php with a condition so the featured grid would only display on the page I designate.
Add to page.php
if ( is_page(ID) ) {
// Include the featured content template.
get_template_part( 'featured-content' );
}
After changing the front page display to my static page I noticed the featured content was being output in the source, however it was not showing up on the page itself.
I realized the body classes determined if this would work or not. All I had to do is add blog to the body class for that page. The front page display sets the body class to page for static page and blog for posts page.
Using the code below I appended the blog class to the body.
function add_blog_to_body_class($classes) {
$classes[] = 'blog';
return $classes;
}
add_filter('body_class','add_blog_to_body_class');
I am able to set my static page & have my featured posts grid 😀