Wait for user interaction with a widget in the frontend (INLINE JUPYTERNOTEBOOK)

I'm trying to create a simple GUI that works embedded in a jupyter notebook. The idea is to create a slider widget that updates a plot. Once a user finds the preferred slider position, then he just clicks a button widget, and the program saves the slider position (user feedback).

The following code works when at the beginning of the jupyter notebook I set:

%matplotlib qt

Code (shortened) that creates plots, sliders, and updating mechanism:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.widgets import Slider, Button

fig, ax = plt.subplots(nrows=1, ncols=2)
... CODE THAT DEFINES THE PLOTS
fig.text(0.1, 0.035, "$\it{Please\ select\ the\ most\ realistic\ hyperparameter\ configuration. }$")
plt.draw()

paramfreq = plt.axes([0.25, 0.1, 0.65, 0.03], facecolor='lightgoldenrodyellow')
slider = Slider(paramfreq, 'Hyperparam. conf.', 1, self.user_feedback_grid_size, valinit=1, valstep=1)
def update(val):
    param_ind = int(slider.val-1)
    update_errorbar(l1, x_axis_points, np.mean(self.irf(param_ind,'y'),axis=0), xerr=None, yerr=np.std(self.irf(0,'y'),axis=0)) 
    update_errorbar(l2, x_axis_points, np.mean(self.irf(param_ind,'r'),axis=0), xerr=None, yerr=np.std(self.irf(0,'r'),axis=0)) 
    fig.canvas.draw_idle() 
slider.on_changed(update) 

confirm_ = plt.axes([0.8, 0.025, 0.1, 0.04])
button = Button(confirm_, 'Confirm', color='lightgoldenrodyellow', hovercolor='0.975')
def confirm(event):
    typed_value = int(slider.val)
    print('Your choice was: ' + str(typed_value))
    self.user_feedback = self.current_xi_grid[(int(typed_value)-1),:]
    self.user_feedback_was_given = True
    plt.close('all')

button.on_clicked(confirm)
plt.show()

Event loop:

while True:
    if self.user_feedback_was_given:
        break
    plt.pause(0.5)

The problem is that I would like the GUI to be embedded in the jupyter notebook. When I try to achieve this by replacing

%matplotlib qt

by

%matplotlib widget

I run to a new problem: "plt.pause()" does not work with %matplotlib widget (ipympl). I have tried numerous different approaches but I cannot find a solution that works. Thanks in advance for any help.