OK... so I finally called apple support and made an appointment for the Genius Bar. 1) As soon as I started describing my problem they asked if the problem started after downloading ios9... so there is no doubt in my mind they are well aware of the problem. 2) after describing the steps I took in attempting to resolve it, I was told by tech that deleting all the data on my phone was not enough, that they have a way of going deeper and removing the ios as well which they believed would help and if it didn't help would indicate a hardware issue. The problem was also that if there was a corruption of software error somewhere, it could easily return upon restoring the backup. So whatever they did, helped 95%.. it was functional although there was occasional freezing and dead spots in the screen though they occurred much less frequently over the next 12 hours.
Side notes: 1) Interestingly when I restored from my backup on my PC, my apps never transferred over.
2) ultimately I traded my phone in for a 6s plus and they gave me $375 credit - I didn't need or want a new phone until the 7 comes out but I rely on it too much to deal with this as a continuing problem.
3) upon set up of the new phone - again no apps loaded to phone - although the phone had the memory of the folders I had set up for the apps. More frustratingly, I could not re download the apps without an error message - took an hour an the phone with tech support and seems to be working now.
In closing, taking it to the genius bar did solve 95% of the problem so that wold be my recommendation - at least until apple fixes this.