Thanks to both of you for your suggestions. It turns out it was mainly my technique, coupled with a little misunderstanding, causing my problem. That, and using the Red sweep color. All became clear when I changed to Blue :-)
My interpretation is as follows (and please correct me if I'm wrong):
I hit the space in time with each sylable (I'm using the "* " trick here) including the last sylable of each line, and then when I want the sweep of the last sylable to end I advance (space) to the 1st sylable of the next line, then hit CTRL. This works fine BTW.
This became obvious when using the Blue sweep color, as the word about to be (not yet) "actioned" is shown in red, whereas words (or sylables) already tagged via the Space are in Blue.
I realize I'm not explaining it well, but I'm happy that I've found a solution that I can work with and that gives me the timing and results I was looking for.
I have also found a few ways to "speed up" the redraw of the screen (using 2, 3 and 4 line display).
I did also upgrade my graphics card to the Radeon 64 DDR which had some positive effect.
All in all, I'm now very happy. If I could center the words on the screen, I'd be extatic
Admin Answer: Karaoke Home Producer 2.009 has line centering as a Setting you can change. Also, the manual addresses how to use the em-space that will take up a capital "M" width on the display, moving text to the right if the text left-align setting is selected instead of centering. 
Thanks, Jimi