The stability of Panels in Drupal 8 is improving each day. But in case you want to build something similar to a panels page, without using Panels... you can do that today using a custom Controller and a custom twig template.

Twig is the new template engine introduced in Drupal 8. Twig provides us a fast and safe way to organize the logic of PHP in a way that makes it simpler for template developers. (More information available at http://twig.sensiolabs.org)

With the help of the Drupal console we generate a custom module with the following command:

$ drupal generate:module [options]

We also generate a controller:

$ drupal generate:controller [options]

**The options for generation will vary depending on what you need.** 

Then we enable the custom module and twig_tweak module:

$ drush en custom_module twig_tweak -y

In the modules directory in the custom module we just created, we find the src/Controller directory with the new controller class (i.e. ResourceLinks.php)

<?php
namespace Drupal\custom_module\Controller;
use Drupal\Core\Controller\ControllerBase;
/**
 * Class ResourceLinks.
 *
 * @package Drupal\custom_module\Controller
 */
class ResourceLinks extends ControllerBase {
  /**
   * Page.
   *
   * @return array
   *   Render array for the page
   */
	public function page() {
		return [
			'#theme' => 'custom_resource_links',
		];
	}
}

And in our custom.module file is our hook_theme:

<?php

use Drupal\Core\Routing\RouteMatchInterface;

/**
 * Implements hook_help().
 */
function custom_module_help($route_name, RouteMatchInterface $route_match) {
  switch ($route_name) {
    // Main module help for the custom_module module.
    case 'help.page.custom_module':
      $output = '';
      $output .= '<h3>' . t('About') . '</h3>';
      $output .= '<p>' . t('The Custom module provides custom configuration') . '</p>';
      return $output;

    default:
  }
}

/**
 * Implements hook_theme().
 */
function custom_module_theme($existing, $type, $theme, $path) {
	return [
		'custom_resource_links' => [
			'variables' => [],
		],
	];
}

The copy in the custom module is very basic. Intentionally so. The actual version of the template will reside in the custom theme for the site. A version of the template is required in the custom module. But we want to keep all our custom templates in the custom theme. So just add a couple very basic lines into the module's template.

file: custom-resource-links.html.twig

<div class="resource-links"></div>

The full contents of the template in your custom theme:

{{ drupal_block('resource_links_introduction') }}
<h2> {% trans %}Resources by Type{% endtrans %}</h2>
<div class="match-height col-sm-6">
    <h4>Type of links:</h4>
    {{ drupal_block('views_block__resource_links_block_1') }}
</div>
<div class="match-height col-sm-6">
    {{ drupal_block('resource_links_instruction') }}
</div>