[Robert Ellenberg]

Extra symbols are inserted when inserting an equation environment: Press F5, type "3" to insert equation, then this happens:

\begin{equation}

\label{<++>}
\end{equation}<++>

I'm not sure if the <++> is intentional, but I think it may be a bug.

I'm running Ubuntu 12.04x64, and have vim-latex suite loaded through pathogen.

Examples of the inserted environments

That's intentional. See:

:help place-holders

You can use Ctrl-J to move your cursor from place-holder to place-holder. You can then type over the place holders. Or you can just use the place holders as a way to jump out of the environment.

In this case, inserting the equation (which you can do via EEQ as well) places your cursor in the middle of the equation, and then you can hit Ctrl+J to bring you to the label. Once you're done making a label, you can hit Ctrl+J to bring you to the end of the equation.

Alternatively, you can modify the default environments and remove their place-holders if that's not your cup of tea.