My apologies, I see now why you would be confused. I mistakenly thought I had seen that the popup shows when hovering over a feature in the results pane. So my only point in mentioning that I am using the Popup Panel widget versus the default popup was because the default popup shows directly on the feature (allowing the user to see where that result is on the map) whereas the Popup Panel widget does not. Basically I was trying to justify the need for my request.
At the end of the day, I am simply looking for the hovered over result feature to be highlighted on the map only. Sorry for all the confusion.