brent Can I rip out the open apps? Is this what I remove?
Let us not forget that those applets called Launcher don't constitute an icon-only task manager, as in the other DEs. Xfce doesn't have one of those. They're just icons like what you might put on your desktop to launch a favorite program (if you're a fan of Windows). They don't know anything about programs you've launched from the menu, let alone which programs are running at a given time.
On the other hand, Plank provides that functionality, subject to its settings. And it provides the dots you ask for, that indicate open applications. Plus, it saves screen space, unlike another panel, by staying out of the way until it's needed. Set up correctly, it's the ideal task manager, and offers the features you ask for. Why not give Plank another chance to help you?
The first time I saw the Latte dock, in "Another Interesting Distro" that I was exploring, I couldn't wait to get rid of it, and return that VM to a set-up more familiar to me. But now, having learned about it over time, Latte is a standard feature of every Plasma DE that's in use here - which means every Solus machine except my testing laptop. That one uses Plank instead (which, as it turns out, I like even better than Latte).