I would just share my personal opinion. I do not understand the lighting network that well but I'll write down my food of thought for the first question.
- I think that you need to open a new channel / switch to a one available for you. Lighting network, as I see it, is more about small tranzactions so everything lesser than 1 BTC should be fine in terms of utility. Buying a coffee, buying electronics, buying food or clothes would be all possible.
Also, once implemented and mass adopted we might see a huge drop in bitcoin's main network in terms of transactions, unconfirmed transactions and taxes, of course.