1) I really don't think this is true. The point of the story is that Amrod, or Ambarato, is indeed
Umbarato, the fated one. In his notes on the "Shibboleth", CT notes:
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Originally Posted by Christopher Tolkien
The material concerning the names of the twin brothers is confused and confusing, clearly because it was only as my father worked on them that the strange and sinister story emerged. It seems to me very probable that when he gave the mother-names (6) Ambarto and (7) Ambarussa it had not yet arisen, nor yet when he began the note that follows the list of the mother-names, saying that 'the first and last of Nerdanel's children had the reddish hair of her kin' - that is Maedros with his nickname Russandol and the younger of the twins Ambarussa (Amras).
The story first emerged, I think, with the words The most authentic seems to be thus: The two twins were both red-haired. Nerdanel gave them both the name Ambarussa ...' It was then, no doubt, that my father changed the name Ambarto to Umbarto in the list and reversed the names of the twin brothers (see note 62), so that Ambarussa becomes the elder of the two and Ambarto/Umbarto the youngest of Fëanor's children, as he is in the legend told here.
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So when the story of the burning of the youngest son emerged, Ambarto/Umbarto became the youngest son.
2) I'm really hesitant about this, because it's very easy to see these as merely instances of careless phrasing. In the post-LotR revision to the Tale of Years, written around the same time as the Grey Annals (i.e. c. 1951), it is still only Maidros who perishes, implying the story of Maglor casting the Silmaril into the sea was still present. That at least means that the Lay of Leithien must be taking poetic license, and maybe indicates that Tolkien was phrasing things carelessly in the letter. And "Concerning 'The Hoard'" is of course not primarily concerned with this; I'm inclined to take these little asides in Tolkien's explanations of things to fans with a grain of salt.
Those are my doubts, anyway. It must be said, however, that three such statements do begin to look like a pattern. I may also be letting my personal feeling get in the way here. The image of Maglor casting the Silmaril into the sea is one of the best and most striking moments in the Legendarium, and if Tolkien decided to eliminate it, I think he made his story far worse thereby. But of course that shouldn't have any bearing on this.
I don't know. Perhaps conflicting stories are told about what happened to Maglor. After all, no one is likely to have been there to witness his and Maedhros's fates. I would be satisfied with being cagey about it, inserting a "Some have said" that Maglor perished in the sea, "but others tell that" he cast the Silmaril into the sea and wandered the shores lamenting.