Is it possible to use cron to accomplish the following particular use case? I desire for the scheduler to trigger every five minutes from a specific start time, such as 1:00 PM to 5:45 PM.

The reason you need two lines: cron applies the step to a single minute range (0-45/5) within a single hour range (17). You can't mix “run every 5 min for the whole hour from 13:00 to 16:59 PLUS only the first 45 min of 17:00” in one cron line — the minute field is a single expression that applies identically to every selected hour.

The pattern 0-45/5 is shorthand for “0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45” — ten runs in the 17:00 hour. Combined with13-16 at */5, you get 48 runs (12 each in 13, 14, 15, 16) plus 10 in 17 = 58 runs across 4h45m. Verify on the calendar that the boundary at 17:00 lines up the way you expect (it does — both lines run at 17:00 if you use */5 13-17 instead, hence the explicit split).

For more variations on “every N minutes” patterns, see the cron every 5 minutes guide.