Does anyone have experience opening multiple WF forms simultaneously in Web? I'm getting undesireable drawing behavior.

I have a feature creation and edit tool which opens multiple forms (using multiple WFs) to allow users to simultaneously edit a handful of related features.  In Web, the tool opens a dialog containing tabs with a panel>workflow component for each of four workflows.

I'm having a lot of difficulty getting this working nicely.  I am relying on workflow.run and ui.activate commands to initialize and draw everything, and sometimes I am able to get everything opening but the drawing behavior is problematic:

1. Blinking.  As the forms' element .load events fire, the focused tab blinks around between the forms until the last one is done drawing; it appears as though each time a form element is updated that form then pops into focus.  I've tried to run the workflows asynchronously with the dialog or the WF panels deactivated, but this prevents them from drawing at all.  Is there a method to deal with this?
2. Interoperability.  I'd like a few of the form elements to update downstream attributes in the other forms from the .change event.  Of course I can re-run the other forms with an input here, but I'd rather not a) repeat all that logic and b) pop the other forms into focus.  I know that forms are bound to the app and can be accessed, at least somewhat, through the app state accessible using the operation viewer.get-current-layout.  Could I perhaps bind to forms through the app and make updates to them that way, or any other way for that matter, or am I better off dropping this idea?