Wow, I feel bad for you - I have not had any of these issues with Lion. In fact, save for one annoying bug, Lion's been solid. I too hope Mountain Lion delivers a better experience than Lion did.
Well, to be fair, I just bought a 2012 Macbook Pro, and it, of course, has Lion on it. I'm not seeing any issues with it. So, maybe it was just a bad combo of what I had on my iMac and the upgrade process. I think it boils down to some sort of 'permissions hell', but it doesn't matter. I'm restoring her to factory tonight.
Cheers.