Forgive me, it seems that it wasn't the community packs after all. I had to find, delete, then reinstall the user content that I had. One at a time... I will now go and figure out why the spheres of power files are doing this.
For the spheres of power stuff, you can just double click on the .hl files that come in the zip.
And that is the basic install.
Then add the update source, that is included with each spheres of power file, and after they're all added, restart hero lab.
That way, it will check for updates, and you can update everything to the latest version, which in theory works fine.
If there are still issues, I'd report them to TheIronGolem, in the Spheres of Power thread.