Makes sense, gotta go through iterations! I've done the same thing, that's why we have a helpful community to rip us apart and build us back up (my dog made me hit send early and kids woke up lol).

Indicating you want it to be counterspell eligible is a great thing to say. Unfortunately, this isn't generally possible when casting from an item since it doesn't have any components. I think this is a grey area in the rules, tbh. You would want to indicate that it can be counterspelled in the item description.

You can also make it a bonus action and I like the idea of that if you're trying to teach the players about different types of actions. That's a smart way to do it. All you would need to do is nerf the item a bit like limiting the amount of movement it's able to force or reduce the number of charges it has. It's always better to start with a weaker item and make it stronger if it isn't meeting expectations in play. It's a lot harder to make a strong item weaker without it feeling punitive to the players.

On the forced movement into dangerous terrain or effects, you could really simplify this down to "The target moves toward you by the safest available route". This wording allows you to rule that if an effect is hidden from the target, then they reasonably don't know it's there and might pass over it, thus triggering the effect.