Featured articles is sort of what I would call a dinosaur, though it does have functionality that isn't provided elsewhere in the module, you can create similar functionality with Custom Display

1. Sort your Category, if you go to the Category screen on Manage Content, you should see a Sort Items link, you can choose certain items to be brought to the top of the Custom Display display type.

2. You could create a "featured category" and add that as a related category to articles you want showing up in that list. Setup a custom display showing only the top X number of articles in that category, sorting by created date or last updated date.

Category Feature allows for sorting, and choosing when this featured item shows up in the list (start/end dates), using the Category sort you can't control the "dates" for the sorting.