I think I have solved my issue.
1. I misunderstood something about how moodle works. I was convinced that the old administration block (some refer to it as settings block) had now moved to the bar at the top of the page. This is not the case: the block exists as it did in previous moodle versions.
2. Once I figured out that the block was still there, I was confused because it did not appear anywhere in the "Add a block" dropdown. I read on the moodle forums that this is because the admin and navigation blocks are in protected mode, which prevents you from changing where they are visible (doesnt matter if you are trying to add or remove them). To have them appear you simply unprotect them.
3. Now I was able to add an admin block wherever I wanted. However, the goal was to have this block visible only to admins. So I turned editing in moodle on, clicked on the assign roles button, and was greeted by a "You are not able to assign any roles here" message. In another post I found out that I needed to add an admin block to this page as well, which then allowed me to visit the permissions page for the admin block. Once there, I removed the guest/student/etc roles from block:view, and made sure manager was allowed.
4. Currently I have set the admin block to appear on every page of the site. Logging in as a normal user, I do not see the block.
Sorry if the text is a bit longwinded. I just wanted to share with others for future reference.
