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Who win's out? I want my portal-ext.properties file to win out.

You're out of luck, sorry: While the properties-files get read first (and even there is an order in which they're applied), anything that's configured in the database will override your precious portal-ext.properties defaults.
This is actually a behavior that you probably want: Otherwise you could never configure (at runtime, without restart) any setting that you've defaulted in portal-ext.properties. Liferay will never write to the properties files, with the notable difference of portal-setup-wizard.properties once you fill out the required values.
Not only will you have to "leave the control panel fields blank", you'll have to never submit a form with configuration values to the database.
If you go to Control Panel / Server Administration / Properties, you can search for your desired properties value and see where it's coming from: Database or properties file.

I just found a good example to illustrate the case where data is read exactly once:
The default admin settings will be used to create the administrative account upon first startup. On subsequent startups, this account is obviously no longer created - it would be quite unexpected if it were created repeatedly.
It'd be great if these values were indicating when they're read, and if they're used once (like the admin account), overridable through UI (like many settings), or used always (like the database connection, which obviously can't be stored in the database). But so far they aren't, and you'd have to use your imagination to come up with a good explanation in case something displays unexpected behavior.

I was hoping that someone can explain what has the higher priority, portal-ext.properties or the control panel.
I have company.default.home.url and default.landing.page.path set in my portal-ext.properties file. But there also values in the control panel's Instance Settings page for Home URL and Default Landing Page fields.    Who win's out? I want my portal-ext.properties file to win out. Do I need to leave the control panel fields blank or will they be overridden by the  portal-ext.properties file.

Who wins out? It is not always clear.

Some portal-ext.properties settings are only used at first launch when the DB is being populated. Things like the default admin settings for example.

Some settings control how the node functions and those will come only from portal-ext.properties, for example setting main.servlet.https.only. These kinds of settings will not be anywhere in the database and only affect the node itself.

Rule of thumb, if you see a place to edit it in the control panel, you should edit it there.

Thanks that is helpful.  So something like default.logout.page.path would have to be managed form the instance setting page in the control panel. I think this jives with what Olaf was saying as well.

Guys again thanks was able to resolve issue by modifying the values in the control panel instead the portal-ext.properties file. I'm not sure I like this but I can live with it.