I have tried VS Code for notebooks, but for the life of me I am not able to get an interpreter console attached to the same kernel running the notebook, and for

I have tried VS Code for notebooks, but for the life of me I am not able to get an interpreter console attached to the same kernel running the notebook, and for me that's a no-go. I usually use the console as the way to test things/syntax easily, and then move that to the notebook.