I believe I have found a relevant bug report and a work around for various issues using the 'Terminator' terminal emulator program, including:

1. New terminals were placed behind existing terminals.
2. Opening a new terminal on a workspace that did not already have a terminal open on it would move an already existing terminal from another workspace to the workspace that the new terminal was opened on.

The bug report is here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/terminator/+bug/1508531

The work around is mentioned in one of the comments. Edit your ~/.config/terminator/config file and add 'dbus=False' under [global_config]. For example:

[global_config]
	dbus=False
[keybindings]
[profiles]
  [[default]]
    scrollback_infinite = True
[layouts]
  [[default]]
    [[[child1]]]
      type = Terminal
      parent = window0
    [[[window0]]]
      type = Window
      parent = ""
[plugins]


This seems to have resolved the issues mentioned above for me.