What is better to use on your Nav bar: Category Pages or Regular Pages

Whats up guys!

So in the last three weeks I've been diving into SEO and currently working on building a couple blogs with wordpress.
It has been a grind to say the least but I'm learning lot's! Anyway..

I have my sites structured and designed for the most part. I'm currently optimizing each page for SEO with AIOSEO.
I just have a question before I go any further:

What is better for SEO: Using category pages or regular pages with the category posts listed? I can't seem to find the answer i'm looking for or at least not an article that goes over the differences. Currently i'm using category pages in my nav bar but for some reason AIOSEO doesn't allow me to edit SEO on them.
I've checked some random blogs that are ranking high for their relative niche and some use category pages in the nav bar, others seem to use stand alone pages.

After some searching and reading articles it seems like the general consensus is that using category pages is better for SEO. I just don't know why AIOSEO wouldn't allow me to edit the SEO on that page..

I've been combing over so many