ESP32 confusion

You don't. You'd have to re-write the IDE programmer. So it's just way easier to use the circuit outlined by @chrisknightley

It works a charm in my ESP-32 based project I can tell you, which is also ESP32WROOM + CH340 (G in my case). I think I used pain old BC847's for the transistors.

If you're willing and able to build something based on a bare ESP32 module, you should also have no trouble at all including two transistors and two resistors.