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Hello @bjackstill124 Welcome to the community!
I have some insights that may answer your question and I have previously posted on the matter here, so I will link one of my posts here. In short to answer your questions:
Yes, the game is rigged. By that I mean the boards are rigged to make players fail by dropping the wrong candies, but equally some boards are rigged to drop the right candies to pass, those are "lucky" boards.
I can't answer your question of why you only pass if you pay. You have probably run out of gold bars. Some levels are meant to be played using boosters near the end or gold bars for extra moves (legendary levels mostly) so the best way to succeed in Candy Crush is to not let yourself run out of gold and try not to run out of lollipop hammers and UFOs.
I have found that it is possible to play Candy Crush for free if we use events, boosters and gold wisely, but this is quite a balancing act.
Check my tips here: