I’m also not a CMake user. I had to add these to the .cpp of my VTK widget class:
#include <vtkAutoInit.h>
VTK_MODULE_INIT(vtkRenderingOpenGL2) // VTK was built with vtkRenderingOpenGL2
VTK_MODULE_INIT(vtkInteractionStyle)
VTK_MODULE_INIT(vtkRenderingFreeType)
Unless you have a specific reason not to use CMake it is probably better you learn to use CMake. All the C++ examples rely on CMake and most users of VTK use CMake to set up their projects. CMake will automatically do a lot of the setting up for you.
Visual Studio knows about CMake CMake projects in Visual Studio, but I havent used this approach. I tend to use cmake-gui and select either ninja or the MSVC IDE when building projects.