It's possible that the second HDMI port on your Raspberry Pi 5 isn't recognized by recalbox due to a lack of implementation or activation parameters. Since you'd prefer to avoid using an HDMI hub and instead select which HDMI port to use through the menu, you might want to check for any updates or patches that enable this feature. Alternatively, you could explore configuration options within recalbox or the Raspberry Pi settings to see if there's a way to activate the second HDMI port manually.