I am using Blueprints as a prefab container for assets to take advantage of instances. My question is when I move/edit assets within the blueprint container they are constantly trying to be updated in the world. Is there a way to turn off this auto update feature?
No, because blueprint don’t work that way, by updating blueprint you effecting all it’s instances. Blueprint is a class same as C++ class, it a instruction how object instance of a class behaves, if you change something in the class all it instances are being apply that change as you changed how they are made, and engine use blueprint class to reconstruct the object when you load the level as it is only data that contain that information, that why they are called “blueprints” in first place.
Unity use prefabs because it does not support object classification same as UE4 does, all the code sit in the components and all objects are individual constructs on there own, and you can only have copies of them. Only way to avoid need to rebuild the same object over and over again is copy pasting or to save there state as asset and that what prefab is. UE4 does not need that as it can have class of objects and instances can be edited on level and those changes are saved with level and copy pasted.
If you like Unity-style prefabrication there a free plugin that allows that in UE4: