Same mid-2015 MBP, same problem. Happens for me on both Microsoft Word 16.30 and 16.31. I get what looks like a ~10sec lockup upon text selection in Word. During that time, mouse movements still render but the rest of the OS doesn’t visibly update until the lockup passes, at which point the screen is redrawn. Seems that it’s a graphics card issue: my system logs show Word causing a GPU Reset / DumpGPURestart each time. Evidently it’s not a hard lockup, as other applications seem to continue working while the screen is non-responsive.
From my testing, it appears the lockup only happens when the discrete graphics card is active (and despite the fact that the discrete card may have not been activated by Word, but rather, some other app). Note that any external display connected through Thunderbolt will automatically activate the discrete graphics card.
For now, a workaround is to ensure only the integrated graphics card is running, in which case Word seems to run smoothly.