Making functional looking symbols

I'm trying to make a schematic symbol that looks "functional" instead of looking like yet another box. Is there a way to select a region of the schematic (including wires, instances, labels etc.) and paste it into the symbol with everything visible ending up on the usual layer the symbol is drawn on? I'd use that as a starting point for making a simplified, functional symbol. I did already try doing just the copy and paste into the symbol - all the schematic elements did copy across into the symbol but surprisingly everything retained it's schematic functionality and layers i.e. I could still select instances and change their parameters etc. even though I was in the symbol view!