Software Updater misbehaving since upgrade to 22.04

Question

I've been a long time Ubuntu LTS user. My system has been upgraded several times, most recently to 22.04. To be honest, I don't even recall which LTS release was the first I used. It probably goes back to 2016 or 2014 though. Somewhere back there.

With 22.04 I have encountered problems. Most were related to the SNAP package of Firefox, which I removed and swapped out for the regular distribution. That seems to have corrected those errors. (Details here, instructions for what I did here, just in case it matters.)

However, this question is about the Software Updater. Ever since the 22.04 upgrade it sometimes shows me software that is available to Upgrade, but it won't let me select any of it. Here is a recent example:

I had to dig to find out what the boxes with exclamation marks mean - upgrade available, vs. update available - but I cannot select them. They are grayed out.

Which packages it lists varies with a given run.

I could go run apt to deal with these, but I don't know if it is safe to do so. Perhaps they need some other piece of software to be updated (or upgraded) before I upgrade them? And if it is safe to upgrade them, why not just have the software updater do it automatically?

I stress, this has never happened before in any of my previous LTS installations, and I have no clue why the behavior changed. I know it did change after the 22.04 upgrade. I also know that I have done nothing to avoid updates with the exception of avoiding the Firefox SNAP since that was utterly unreliable.

A second question that might be related. The update pictured above installed a new kernel. Fair enough, but the updater has stopped telling me that a reboot is needed after a kernel installation. The above update finished and gave me this:

No indication a reboot is required, all the same packages that it told me need upgrades are still listed, and in addition it now includes the old kernel packages to remove.

But I haven't even rebooted. In 20.04 when I installed a new kernel it came back with an empty package list and told me a reboot was required. Only on subsequent runs of the software updater would it list the kernel packages that could be removed.

This behavior change hit with 22.04 as well.

Can anyone tell me what is going on here? Between these issues, the Firefox SNAP (which was unstable in the extreme), and some GNOME weirdness I am thinking it might be time to find a new distro. Alternately, maybe enough cruft has built up over the years that I need to do a complete fresh install. Perhaps that would address things like this? That would be painful, but it could be done.

Thanks in advance for any help possible. Or even just confirmation that someone else is seeing these weird things with the software updater.

EDIT 9/22/22

user535733 mentions that Libre Office uses phased updates and suggested this command to see the policy:

apt-cache policy libreoffice

When I run that, I get this:

libreoffice:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 1:7.3.6-0ubuntu0.22.04.1
  Version table:
     1:7.3.6-0ubuntu0.22.04.1 500
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates/universe amd64 Packages
     1:7.3.2-0ubuntu2 500
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy/universe amd64 Packages

No mention of phased updates. But it says that package is not installed, so I tried one of the packages listed in the image above that was in the list anc could not be selected:

$ apt-cache policy libreoffice-help-common
libreoffice-help-common:
  Installed: 1:7.3.6-0ubuntu0.22.04.1
  Candidate: 1:7.3.6-0ubuntu0.22.04.1
  Version table:
 *** 1:7.3.6-0ubuntu0.22.04.1 500
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1:7.3.2-0ubuntu2 500
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy/main i386 Packages

Still no indication of phased releases there. Am I missing something?

I also note that it isn't only LibreOffice that has done this. I have seen quite a few other packages show up this way, but only since 22.04 arrived.

This morning's run of the software updater had a large number of packages in it, none of which was a new kernel. But this time it did tell me a reboot was required. And of course it doesn't tell me which package caused the reboot to be needed.

I need to go digging for any sort of log the software updater might leave behind. Maybe there is something in there to explain all this weirdness?

Edit 9/25

I've mentioned that packages other than LibreOffice wind up in this same state: listed as available for upgrade but unselectable in the software updater UI. Here is a screen capture showing some others that were in that state on Sept 8. I didn't originally include this image because I thought the ones above would be adequate. But since LibreOffice can do phased updates, perhaps that hid the depth of the issue. So...

I'm still looking to understand this, or to report it if it really is one or more bugs. The outstanding questions as I see them are:

• Why does software updater show me packages I cannot select only after the 22.04 upgrade?
• Is it a bug or is it deliberate? (Note that the UX in this case is terrible... you can't select them and there is no explanation for it, so why even show them?)
• Why does software updater no longer inform me that a reboot is needed after a kernel update? Again bug or feature? (I suppose some kernel updates are not security related and can therefore just wait for the next "natural" reboot, but in that case software updater should not immediately come back and tell me I can remove old kernel packages.)

Thanks again for any and all insight into this.