You say that like it can't possibly work that way. The Aim action for Rogues from the Class Feature Variants UA already works that way:
And the grappled condition already uses similar language to prohibit movement.
Counterspell could easily say:
Sure, it's super fiddley and I wouldn't play with the spell this way, but mechanically it works just fine. 5e is certainly capable of it. No, we don't really need to care about misty step or other oddball corner cases. This is D&D, not Magic: The Gathering.
Personally, I don't have much of a problem with counterspell. I would prefer that it didn't have the "At Higher Levels" clause at all, but that's really pretty minor. If I really have an issue with it interfering with my encounter as a DM, I would probably just add an additional spellcaster who has counterspell, but that's somewhat of a luxury of milestone leveling.
True strike I think is fairly useless, but it is useful in an ambush or when combined with a much higher level spell that requires a spell attack roll. In both of those cases, you can't really just attack two turns in a row. However, it's somewhat rare that you actually care that much, so its just not that useful. I think true strike would also be more appropriate if it cost a bonus action and then prevented you from casting spells and gave you disadvantage on attack rolls the next turn. However, I think that's too fiddley for 5e.
Blade ward has the same problem that true strike does. It's only useful when Dodge doesn't work because your attackers already have disadvantage. That just doesn't come up often enough.
Spare the dying I think is shockingly awful. When a Healer's Kit costs 5 gp for 10 de facto potions of spare the dying, and you can make a Medicine (Wisdom) check to do it instead, too, it's just inexcusably bad. Both of those take a standard action, and spare the dying is range touch. I think either the cantrip should either have a range (15 to 30 feet), should only require a bonus action, or should have some other benefit (e.g., automatically succeeds on death saves over a specified time period).