Discussion Practical design for UI "panels"

I find so many tutorials on the basics of Canvas/UI but I don't need to know what a button is. I have a moderately complex menu used in VR and I'd like to keep the elements accessible in the editor.

To clarify consider a canvas that tells you it is "connecting with the server" and then reports it succeeded or failed. If it failed it prompts with some buttons. If one of the buttons is selected a pair of inputs is displayed along with another button. Know what I mean? All the controls are on this canvas but they are activated and deactivated through code.

Code isn't the problem but what is a practical way to create all the "panels" in the editor so they can be easily created and compared (placement of buttons for instance). This is world-space canvas.

If anyone knows about a video like "100 time saving hints for creating Unity UIs" I'd love to watch it.

Thanks.