Yes.
Thanks a lot for your thorough description, but I've used the purchased version of G2 Xposed already to my satisfaction for quite some time on 4.2.2.
I am not the only one having problems with it under 4.4.2
if you read on for a page or so here (from post #69 onwards) you can see others report that navbar customization fails in kitkat.
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2528304&page=7
The only thing I can think of is that I did not take the official OTA but flashed the rom instead.
I'm not sure if this could make any difference. I have flashed both V50018 and V50020 roms and navbar customization had no effect on either.
So I went back to my 4.2.2 back up, just for the recents key.
Did you take the OTA or did you flash kitkat?
I'm surprised that it works for you as no-one else reported this in the Xposed thread mentioned above.
Earlier today I even opened a topic asking people whether Xposed navbar changes work or not, and whether they took OTA or flashed, but no responses so far: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2723562