I've tried any change possible with statusbar.conf, you can add any .desktop you want there. The best option is personal-menu. I'm guessing your first problem is because the menu is defined as "pressonly", that is, you touch it and it immediately opens up so you can drag your finger to your selection, raising your finger than signals a click. All launchers are like that except one - personal-menu, the recommended choice for Frediablo users
The fix for it is to rearrange the menu so that no application sits under your finger when it is launched.
You can also put the home menu in the status bar:
[/usr/share/applications/hildon-navigator/switcher-menu.desktop]
X-Load=true
but then you can't use the home key, because it will open the menu in the status bar and the one in the left panel together, so they then close each other ))
The next button is the best, I wouldn't have it any other way now. I'm using the "close" pixmap for it: