When I booted my laptop to ubuntu 13.04 today the panel and launcher were both missing from the screen and I had no idea how to get them back.

Using a ubuntu 13.04 install medium I formatted / and installed the system again leaving my /home intact.
When I logged in to my user account the problem persisted.
The unity-greeter is displayed perfectly fine and the guest account has no problems either.

I was eventually able to get the launcher and panel back by deleting .config/ .gconf/ .local/ and .cache/ but when I restarted my laptop the problem was back.

Do you have any suggestions for me? The last thing I tried earlier was unity --reset but I got an error message telling me that it's deprecated.

Lastly just wanted to ask why the life of Ubuntu 13.04 so short this time around only 9 months.

I am new to Linux using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS but I would have taken all of the steps that you have taken and I would have expected the problem to be solved.
Assuming that you have a backup of /home, why not do a complete reinstall of the system and then restore your /home from backup?
Alternatively, you could create a new account for yourself with a new user ID and see if that works. If this action is successful, you can copy your home files to this new account.
I am content to stay with 12.04 LTS until the new LTS comes out as I do not like to cope with change too often.
PS I have dabbled with several Linux distros recently and the one that impresses me for ease of use and robustness (and automatic wireless configuration) is PCLINUXOS.