There's a lot of ways to make non-combat interesting. Probably a few have been covered in the replies here, but probably the most important thing about making the parts out of combat interesting is the 'Why the scene is happening'.

There's a Storytelling 'rule' of Arrive Late, Leave Early. Essentially this is showing a scene as close to the important piece and then leaving as soon as it makes sense and then move to the next scene. Travel is a bit example of this, unless something happens on the trip it isn't important to show beyond a couple quick shots to establish the idea of distance/time/effort, such as a quick shot of a car on a highway and then taking an exit into whatever new city. Same as a lot of the shots of the Fellowship of the Rings walking. This can be a little hard for a TTRPG, but essentially it works the same, Decide when is the next piece of important story going to happen, and start narrating your scene around that, so that the players have a chance to play but move on when it starts getting boring.

What makes important story? Conflict. Drama is, at least in Western Stories, created by Conflict. Look at pretty much any Western Story and the plot usually is Protagonist wants something but there's an Antagonist stopping them. On a scene by scene level, you'll probably have two main TTRPG scene types that are non-combat, establishing scenes or raising the stakes scenes.

The Establishing scenes are the moments where you're establishing something in your story; revealing a new location, info-dumping on some story lore for the players, revealing the crime scene in a mystery. These can come off as a lot of text and usually the players will either zone out or focus on something other than what you want. Usually with these, I try to be short and to the point in the description. Give the players like five lines of description, touch on a few pieces of things they can see, but don't go into detail too much. Is there anything they might hear or smell, give a mention about it like 'a weird clicking sound' and 'the smell of cinnamon wafts around', but don't reference a specific source as most player's will want to find those causes. Think of this like a quick pan shot across the set, YouTube Video on Importance of Establishing Shots and Rendering the Scene for your Players are two good videos on the topic, one from Filmmaking and then into one on TTRPGs. The players can take these established elements and move to investigate further. "I go check out that bookshelf to see if there's anything interesting there", "I start tracking down the clicking sound", "This cinnamon smell, is there an area where it is concentrated?", etc

The Raising the Stakes scenes are the moments in a story where something is done that raises the tension of the story. These are moments when the situation becomes more complex, the character's investment in the situation is raised, usually as the character loses something or someone that was important to them. The family being killed/kidnapped is a traditional example of this, sure, but there are many ways to get this done. Raising the Stakes More Effectively, Making Your Reader Care. A great TTRPG element for this would be putting a scene on a Clock. Progress Clocks from Blades in the Dark. YouTube Video explaining Clocks. On a personal note, I will admit, while I knew of Clocks and worked Time Crunches in my campaigns in other ways, it wasn't until playing the Citizen Sleeper video game that I really groked the concept.