Both were minor annoyances for me at first lol, thankfully the widget button can be removed (Settings, Home Screen, Edit button - toggle off)

The favorites box is an interesting one, I was originally puzzled with it being empty until I started opening and pinning apps. Now settled on using it as an overflow for my home screen, where 5 of the most used are shown under the clock (with music permanently pinned), and the rest sit in the favorites box.

I did notice some stutter on the apps menu which only occurs while the keyboard is open, but goes away completely when the keyboard disappears. For others it seems like the entire app drawer is stuttery (noticed a long discussion on GitHub with some potential solutions: https://github.com/MM2-0/Kvaesitso/issues/257 )

The last time I used Chrome was a fork called Rockmelt 🥴 then moved to Maxthon, then K-Meleon, and settled on Firefox