Yes, you have to drag it from the assets panel if you want an instance of that component

Probably because this way you can duplicate the variant as a new component and quickly tweak each variant. If you want an instance, dragging from the asset panel is the way as previously said 🙂

Option/Alt dragging a variant to a location outside the component also creates an instance of said component

It’s really helpful for me, I tried to create a menu while hovering effect, your reply solve my problem in easy way 😃