Issue:
When I long-press on a key to get to the special / hidden characters, the extra keys appear offset from the key I pressed and I am unintentionally adding characters I don't want.

This is a defect introduced in the 20.7.0 release which will be fixed in the 20.8.0 release.
What to do:
To avoid adding unwanted characters into your text, swipe all the way to the blank space at the end of the options. When that is highlighted, nothing is selected except the base key character.