I was using Podcast Addict prior to AntennaPod and it had the same issues as your first point. I now experience the same behaviour with AntennaPod and had wrote it off as a "podcasting" glitch or at least an issue with the streams I was listening to.
Hopefully they address these issues in the future but they're definitely not deal breaker issuss for me to want to switch to some closed source alternative.
* Playback while streaming stops, but the network connection hasn't dropped
* AntennaPod via Bluetooth crashes (!) the head unit in a Mazda CX5. No, I don't know how that's possible, either.