Good points, Bingowings.

I'm very curious about the full Tatooine segment that was shot for AOTC, but wasn't found on either the DVD or Blu-ray. There are supposed to be scenes with Padme and Beru talking, Padme fixing up 3PO, and Anakin and Padme receiving Ben's message in the garage, and a proper goodbye to the Lars'. There should be some good character material in there, and I'm curious why they keep holding it back. They even put animatics among the deleted scenes...

A way to fix that situation with Anakin's mother might be that the Jedi did free Anakin's mother, and that he is allowed to see her again once he finished his training. This information could be relayed during the conversation Anakin and Obi-Wan have when they are watching Padme's bedroom. There is a lot of off screen dialogue that could be fit in there, which would be more interesting than that current boring talk about politics.

Then, as Anakin goes to find his mother on Tatooine, he could go to Watto, as that would be the first place he would know to look. Watto's dialogue could be reshuffled to something like "...someone named Lars, at least I think it was Lars. After the Jedi freed her, he married her! Can you beat that!", and so on.

This might also give some more weight to Anakin feeling he wasn't in time to save her: he blames himself for not having finished his training sooner, which would of course lead to him blaming Obi-Wan.