Personally, I loved the Yoda lightsaber duel on AOTC. I always knew Yoda was a stone-cold badass under all that green, and it was nice to see it proven. And again in ROTS, seeing he and Palps duke it out with every imaginable power at their disposal.
Reading your thoughts, about half way through I was thinking "Sure, I see your point, but 5 minutes of the two most powerful Force users in the galaxy staring at each other seemingly doing nothing is something that would better be described in a book... not a movie."
Then as I read the last few lines, it occured to me that you're right. The way they fought each other in the Senate was exactly what they should have been doing all along. Just balls-out crazy shit that ONLY they would be capable of pulling off. Furthermore, it would have made the actual lightsaber battle between Ben and Anakin that much more powerful I think... cutting between the two fights as they did.
So I see your point entirely. Hell, I even agree that Palps and Yoda should have just made a straight up Force mastery contest... would have kicked some serious ass that way. (Get them outside at some point mayhaps... Palps tossing around some cars or what-have-you and Yoda fighting to protect the innocent bystanders involved while trying to win the fight as well... hell, just some thoughts there.)
As I said before, I still enjoyed the fights immensly as they were, (I enjoy the prequels quite a lot, and anyone who says I should apologize for that can go fuck themselves. Cheers!), but you do certainly make a strong case on that one. Hell... maybe I can call on your skills and ideas for some things I'm working on in the RPG arena at the moment. (Star Wars RPG using the Storyteller rules... long story.)