Kotlin's reflection: Simple variable extraction out of String

I've read about reflection in both Kotlin and Java documentation & getattr in Python examples but they all seem to lack my use case:

I have boolean variables like repetitionOfElementsInNewExerciseAllowed in a ViewModel class (Android programming) that I need to update from a different class like HomeFragment. My unsexy approach was the following function in ViewModel:

    fun updateBoolElement (boolElementToUpdate:String, valueToUpdateWith:Boolean){
        when (boolElementToUpdate){
            "repetitionOfElementsInNewExerciseAllowed" -> repetitionOfElementsInNewExerciseAllowed=valueToUpdateWith
        }
    }

Instead of this I'm striving for a recursive approach to extract the variable's name whose value I want to change out of the string boolElementToUpdate like this (pseudo code):

    fun updateBoolElement (boolElementToUpdate:String, valueToUpdateWith:Boolean){
        getAttributeReferenceByName(boolElementToUpdate) = valueToUpdateWith
    }

Is reflection or any other structure in Kotlin capable of doing such wizardry? Thanks for any hint!