I don’t understand what you mean by entering the speeds and power levels “directly to the laser”?
Were you adjusting the power/speed at the laser controller’s touch panel then holding down jog and pulse buttons simultaneously?
Why not run your test cuts from LightBurn?, enter the settings in the area highlighted green in the pic below.
If your job is all setup ready to run, and you wanted to double check it was going to cut correctly you always could select and send to the laser a very small part of job, e.g. select and send just a couple of parts to cut from a test area of the material. e.g.
