lol, you can't even move the cursor the usual way after inserting a smiley, gotta resort to the down arrow
Not sure what you're doing different...
On a computer, Mac or Win, and testing cursor movement keys after inserting a smiley

... I'm able to move the cursor with my left, right, up and down keys

after inserting a smiley. IIRC that's how I did it with the old forum sw.
I am able to move my cursor keys without manually closing the smiley pop-up window.
Alternatively, I can type something ... like 1 2 3... insert a smiley

and manually click the "X" to close the smiley pop-up window and then move my cursor L, R, U or D.
On my iPhone there are no cursor movement keys. A simple tap where you want the cursor to be places it there. Same as old ECF for me.
LOL, other than that... we gotta roll with the ch-ch-ch-ch-changes