There's a lot of fan works portraying ectoplasm as the more potent, pure version of lazarus water. But what if their potency was the other way around?

When Danny was blasted by the portal opening, he should've died. He survived because of the ectoplasm reviving him simultaneously. However, he only half survived. He wasn't fully brought back, resulting in his access to ghost abilities no full mortal should have yet.

I think similar logic could apply to Vlad too, but in the opposite direction. Lazarus water is canonically a substance that both heals the injured and harms the healthy. So if we're saying lazarus water and ectoplasm do similar things, then it explains the difference between Danny and Vlad's accidents.

The ectoplasm healed Danny because he was mortally wounded by a barrier between worlds tearing open with him inside. Meanwhile, the ectoplasm harmed Vlad because he wasn't injured while exposed (at worst he got some soda in his eye), leaving him bedridden for years.

Both are halfas, but Danny was half revived and Vlad was half killed.

With this in mind, lazarus water being the stronger of the two makes sense. People healed by it get little or no ghost characteristics because they've been fully revived. It's a lot harder for someone in that state to gain powers exclusive to the dead/undead. Pit madness? A symptom of ectoplasmic overdose, which happens easily since it's often the whole body getting submerged in the stuff instead of just the effected area. The headcanon that repeated lazarus water exposure makes you more liminal with each use? It's the body slowly building up a resistance and leaving the user slightly less alive every time. (Ra's would've had to have been pretty close to halfa status by the time he last died if that's the case.)

Lazarus water is frequently referred to as the sewage or rotten leftovers of ectoplasm, but it looks like ectoplasm itself is actually weaker by comparison.