I am always annoyingly clicking on the lock and show/hide buttons when working with the layers palette! I only work on my laptop, so real estate matters. I keep the layers palette narrow (the default setting), so when looking in a 4-deep nested group in a symbol, I hardly see the text description. And since those buttons don't appear until you hover over an object, I'm always accidentally locking my objects without actually selecting them as I intended.

Please consider moving them or floating them off the panel, perhaps only in a narrow view. Or letting me lock/hide them by right-clicking the object or layer. Or by selecting the object and clicking a button at the top as in Photoshop. Or via keyboard shortcuts.