You're asking the right questions, and what you're trying to do is actually quite difficult because of all the variables and it being your first time around. I can guarantee you that the next ECU you do (and there will be more as you'll be the guy who knows about them, and you'll be addicted) will have just as many problems, but will be much easier because of what you've been doing now.
The VE table is designed to model the engine's fuel requirements, so once its off idle you'll find that its pretty flat. The Lambda table defines what the power requirements for fueling are, in normal life you will have 1.0 at idle, going to 0.85 in the areas of high power (and possibly in the low power areas for extra cooling on trailing throttle - but we'll not worry about that for the moment), in extreme cases caused by turbos, nitrous and what have you lambda targets go way past 0.8, for example 0.7 is the value you'll be wanting for nitrous, turbo cars run 0.85 to 0.7 depending on the level of boost and subsequent cooling needs.
So, for the time being set your VE table to 1.0 across the map, for now when you are tuning with a lambda sensor, you'll be tuning to get the lambda at 1.0 at all the RPM and KPa sites you'll visit. Then, once you have that, you can leave the VE table alone and use the lambda table to add the fuel you need for power and cooling requirements.
If you're getting a decent idle at 50% of your PW, then set the areas of the VE map visited by the ECU to 50 and see where that gets you. You should be able to tune idle mixtures without a wideband, by ear and by smell. Double check your wiring, and check t again - you may have killed your wideband with execess fuel - you might just have a bad connection.
For the moment though ignire it and concentrate on the idle fueling.