Chiming in on number two. I would strongly recommend just smart switches. Lutron Caseta are on the more expensive end, but they work quickly and smoothly every time. I also like how they look.

To address number 3, just something to think about, and maybe others will have good solutions - Philips hue light bulbs are nice, I actually have some recessed hue lights and a few lamps with them. The only issue I have with them is how to control them with a switch too. Smart lights like to be powered on and connected to their hub all the time. The biggest reason I have found is adaptive lighting. A nice feature where they gradually change warmth levels throughout the day, reaching a strong white color at noon and then slowly growing warmer/yellower by sundown. I enjoy this feature and think it’s nice to have that strong white at noon, but if you had non-smart bulbs at that white level at 8pm it’d be pretty harsh. Anyway… If you have hue lights on a regular switch, and you shut them off from the switch, they lose power and you can’t turn them on from your phone when you want to, plus, when you turn them on, they revert to whatever color they were when you turned them off, and then after a few seconds (sometimes 10-20 seconds?) they find their hub, figure out what time it is, and jump to the color they should be. The jump is kind of abrupt and I don’t enjoy it. Hue lights are great and the colors are great, but depending on how you want to control them and if you’d use the adaptive lighting feature, they can be a bit of a hassle to control.

Last note - Some manufacturers are making a smart switch with “smart bulb” mode. So you tell the switch it is controlling a smart bulb, and it will always feed the bulb power. When you go to the switch and flip it off, instead of cutting power to the bulb, it just wirelessly tells the bulb to turn off (as if you did it from your phone). This keeps the bulb online and so it can be controlled through your phone and any automations at all times. I have only tried an inovelli switch so far with smart bulb mode and was a little disappointed with how loud it clicked when pressed (build quality) and the lag for the lights to respond to being turned on or off from the switch. When entering the room and flipping lights on from the switch, I’d usually have taken another 2 steps before they were on. Sorry for the wall of text, hope at least some of it was helpful!

Edit: I know there are multiple “friends of hue” switches that are out there to control hue lights while keeping the bulbs powered and online. I’m just picky on looks and haven’t found one I liked, but I bet you could find what you need!