Have you tried the GNOME 3 "classic" desktop in Ubuntu? It's very similar to GNOME 2. So far it's worked out well for me.
Also, installing plugins for Gnome 3 is really convenient. For example, I didn't like Alt+Tab switching between programs instead of windows, so I installed this: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/.
There are still some things that bug me though, like I don't see any way to configure the format of the Date/Time.