Masking out Backgrounds and Cut Out Lab

Im designing banners for a high school sports team and they want individual players on them. I discovered the Cut Out Lab and thats working but its a pain to use the mouse so I switched to my Surface Pro so I could just draw, problem is when I used cutout lab theres a major lag between my pen and the program picking up my pen and making a mark. I have to leave my tip there for a good second before I can make a mark and if I dont hold it my pen will make no marks at all. This only happens in the Cut Out Lab, Drawing with the Brush or Eraser in the actual document is fine.

Id much prefer a non destructive method anyways so I dont have to re-erase the background if I miss something later. I dont have much experience with raster images, I mainly work in Vector so this masking stuff has got me stumped. Is there an easy way to just mask out the background non destructively?