Publisher

I understand that Publisher will be removed from 365 in 2026 with the aim to incorporate it's features in Word. I love Publisher and before I had 365 I had a paid version. I use it for newsletters, crafts, knitting patterns, and photo albums. The things I most value are being able to crop and resize images, move text boxes around for best fit, adding effects like shading and wordart, and importing images. I'm not sure that these features could be available in Word so I'm looking for opinions on alternatives. My 365 version of Publisher has become very "buggy" recently with many "not responding" messages, and I don't want to try uninstalling if I can't get it back. It doesn't show as an option in the current list of apps included with 365. 

Can I buy a paid version of Publisher? Would this be supported going forward?

Is there an alternative to Publisher that gives me the features I need and is compatible with my existing .pub documents? 

I'm not looking for a professional package, it's only for occasional home and hobby use, so a subscription model would be unaffordable and unnecessary.

Alternatively, would Microsoft be able to assure me (and others like me) that they can incorporate Publisher features into Word or another app?