When you plucked the sucker from the main plant - it wa growing someway distorted - the leaves were shading one another - so they develped long petioles - leaf stalks to get some light in this the rat nest. Now your plant is developing normally, has good strong leaves coming. Wait another month or 2 - and you can remove the ugly long ones. Your plant is developing another sucker. Unless you want another plant of the same variety - you pluck this one now to preserve the shape of the plant and direct all the energy into growing and blooming.

I do not have the sucker plucker - I think tweezers with long tips work good enough - to scrape it out without damaging the main plant.

I plucked out those two tiny suckers, and look how much its grown in one month! It even bloomed, and there are lots of little buds coming in. I'm still a little unsure if I need to remove leaves or not. There are some on the outer edge that seem stunted by the leaves growing from the crown shading them. Thoughts?

I'm sometimes pretty heavy-handed at removing leaves. If I think the plant could be more symmetrical or if there are any yellow, unhealthy looking leaves, they come off. I think your plant could spare some of the bottom row of leaves. Some of them look a little yellow anyway, and when the bottom row gets completely covered up by the top rows, I see no harm in removing them.