Thank you for good comment!
About the issue with ball, you should be able to hold shift (or other button bound to the action) for 2 seconds and return back to launch at your currently set Checkpoint. Even while the ball is still rolling, you can reset to launch again. The ball will autoreset, when it is at very miniscule velocity, I didn't want to make it return early, because sometimes you can just barely make it to the checkpoint, bump the ball with a bumper, or get into force zone. You still have full control over returning back whenever (unless it's bugged, which I'm sorry about). You can also restart the whole level from pause menu or main menu, at least that should work flawlessly.