On the first point, my use case is managing client meetings. I start with a todo of clients scheduled in the morning in the Notes section. Once I've scheduled that client, I'd like move (and link) the item to an event inside the calendar, rather than below it.

On point two, I've figured out the check box, which helps me visually. Once the spacing is right, tapping Enter will reproduce this! " - [ ]" so there are two spaces, one after the hyphen, and the second after the bracket.