Thank you for the suggestion. I was able to make the original question work. Posting solution here incase anyone else comes across this scenario.
1, First to make the full report display on the home page with filters and search box, insert as a url /web page widget instead of a report widget with &ifv=1 appended to the end of the url.
2. Next, create your own clickable view icons field as a formula rich text field and again incorporate &ifv=1 into that url.
3. Lastly, go to your report and add your new custom view icon field as the first column. Scroll down to the report options section and uncheck "allow viewing records from this report".
Now when you run the report from the homepage, you can filter search and view without multiple QB headers displaying. It is a round about way of doing it, but it works. :)
