Some portlets have been updated recently and changed to use listtemplates. This can be confusing since not all portlets were updated, and its not clear a straight listtemplat table makes sense for all portlets, espcially aggregated portlets like Forums, where you need to show forums from all communities you are a member of.
I think we need to have some sort of guidelines and an organized effort since these have to all appear on the same page together.
I don't know what the best design is. Unordered lists are much more flexible, and also, allow much easier custoization. A table makes sense for more tabluar data, but a list of links should probably remain a list.