Hey kobraGrey, regarding the export not working for the version you installed through apt, this is probably due to a packaging problem. You can check the Plugins tab in the Preferences to see if they are available at all. You could alternatively try the snap package, which ships with most plugins.
Unfortunately, I don't know what you're referring to with the XML wrapper or what you mean with the JSON being wonky. Can you please open an issue on GitHub so that you could attach the files and/or screenshots to show what you mean?