Ok, I was able to figure out a workaround for this, based on this SO answer:
How to simulate a mouse click using JavaScript?
$I->waitForJS('var target = $("span")[0]; var event = target.ownerDocument.createEvent("MouseEvents"); event.initMouseEvent("click", true, true, target.ownerDocument.defaultView, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, false, true, false, false, 0, null); target.dispatchEvent(event); return true;', 3);
This will option click the first span
element. I hard coded in all the values for simplification, but maybe someone wants to write a wrapper for the codeception project.