As for the not-working-after-reboot problem I found out the cause.The pointer that maintains track of currently selected song gets erased after reboot, so my widgets don't know what to play or what is the next/previous song.How the media player keeps track of this is beyond me so unfortunately no fix for this However it should now require only a single press of play/next/previous in the media player to make the widgets work again.
With Linux-powered N900..ANYTHING is possible