hey dude, i share your pain (and i wasn't at my computer to see your original post, but i'm guessing it was very offensive in which case i'm lucky i didn't see it considering i have about 30 hours work to do in 14 hours)

ok i didnt have the same problems with you because i guesss Source works differently to Unreal
I'm not going to waste your time saying what they were

not entirely sure how to fix your ordering problem (i've only effectively had 4 months to play with maya) so there may be some window somerwhere that i'm unaware of

as for deleting the default lambert, if you can't hit delete on it and make it go away then you can't delete it
but to remove the material just make a new material, assign that, and then delete it, the model will go deep green and that means it has no material on it