Having trouble with element spacing in the Virtual Composer.

Two things here:

1. I’m new to the V.C. but I’ve tried and tried and can’t figure this out. I’ve attached some screenshots that show/list my problems/questions – regarding row spacing, element borders,…

2. Also, I’m having a terrible time in the V.C. when I try to find and click on the little “pencil” icon to try and edit a row (ex. Like if I simply want to make the background of the row black). I move my cursor around to make the little pencil, trash can,… thing appear. But it disappears almost immediately – before I can actually get the cursor over any of them to click on. I must be missing something Obvious – but don’t know what.

I did notice this – but it makes no sense. Because of this issue, I thought I’d try working in the Backend Editor. This problem didn’t occur there. So I messed around there for awhile (which prompted issue #1 above). Then I went back to the VC frontend. Now, those little icons don’t jump around like they did before. Why not? What’s different now?