Underuse of tech makes no sense

This is a very 'technological' movie.

It's amazing how mundane and ordinary most tech and tech-usage is.

What's baffling to me is all this 'Agent tech' that is underused.

For example, the mouth-shutting tech - HOW does that work? How do they just shut down Neo's mouth? If that TRULY is a digital projection of his mental self (NOT the other way around, dingbat Morpheus! People do not have digital selves, they have mental selves)..

..then why do the agents have such overriding ability?

If this was explained, then we could extrapolate from that how the same tech could be in other situations, like making Neo's gun punch Neo in the face from distance or make his boots stop working or stick to the ground, or a door or hallway suddenly solidify so he can't get through, AND SO ON. So underused. Only in one scene, and then nothing.

The weird morphing spiderbugs that do absolutely nothing? What? Why do they have to MORPH like that? It's like when Smith takes one out of his 'cigarillo box' (I don't know why I want to call it that), it starts to MORPH until it's a spider. Why does it NEED to do that? Why morphing? Why isn't anyone questioning this scene or the need to morph? It obviously can morph back to the more compact form, but why can't it be smaller for easier installation and why does it have to morph? Why can't it at least instantly become the spider thing? Why does it need to resemble a bug?

Why can't Agents have these little assistant things everywhere all the time? Think how useful a swarm of robot bugs could be when catching a 'criminal' or whatnot. Neo would stand NO chance if the agents used a swarm of metallic bugs in the Kung-Fu fight in ADDITION to their Kung-Fu skills!

But no, they just fire bullets. Why does Smith miss Neo with every shot before their 'epic Kung-Fu fight', by the way?

Why can people dodge bullets (including Neo), but LOSE this ability, if the gun is right next to them? (Smith is able to shoot Neo just fine, but the other agent earlier can't even hit him? Why? Trinity can shoot an agent just fine from close distance, but not from far away? WHY is close proximity this kind of weird deterrent of the enemy's ability to move fast??)

If Agents can jump that far, move that fast, punch that hard, then how can Neo's punches even land, why doesn't Smith at least jump to the ceiling before the train hits him, and so on? Could an agent use that mouth-shutting thing with air molecules to create a solid air wall so bullets can't penetrate it? Could they make an airtight balloon around Neo's (or anyone's) head, so Neo can't breathe? (For the most of the movie, he seems to need to, even in The Matrix)

Could they make the ground below neo become sticky or soft so Neo would sink in it? Could they create a GOLEM out of rocks or air or ..

I hate movies that don't explain some super OP tech they only use in ONE scene, because the implications that are so far-reaching, and could potentially do all kinds of amazing things (a bit like the under-usage of sling rings and The Force(tm))

The way agents operate makes no sense, and the way Neo only wants a couple of hand guns makes no sense (helicopters, portals, persuadertrons, invisibility cloaks, hoverboards, anything we need.. so, only a few pistols and handguns will be perfect).. it's like EVERYONE is underusing everything and trying to be as incompetent as possible, instead of doing the MOST LOGICAL thing any of us would probably do, if we were Agent Smith or Neo or almost any of the characters.

Think about mushrooms.

They exist in this world, right? So why can't they create 'psychedelic hallucinations' in all those guards, so they don't have to kill them? How about sleeping gas? How about..

Yeah, it's obvious the characters in this world have NO imagination, or they don't realize all the options they would have in a 'virtual world' where they can 'break the rules' AND instantly have 'anything they need'.

A smaller question: How do those things that are brought INTO the matrix work? I mean, is it like downloadable content in a video game, and wouldn't the matrix server have to approve such an upload? I mean, those guns are not created by the computers, or are they originally copied/transferred from the matrix servers into the Nebuchadnezzar?

Wouldn't the server detect them as unoriginal, unsigned, outside code that it would just automatically reject?

So many questions...