Fixes some flaky tests in the build as well as the case when tests start before kafka is ready

[nachogiljaldo]

This PR fixes at least 1 flaky test and a scenario when kafka is slow to start and the first tests in the suite just fail.

The cases are various but we have:

• topic creating not waiting before sending and reading
• timeouts
• kafka not started

I don't think this has solved them all, but I managed to get a local build passing as well as in CI, which I could not achieve without these changes.

[seg-atlantis-prod]

Atlantis commands can't be run on fork pull requests. To enable, set --allow-fork-prs or, to disable this message, set --silence-fork-pr-errors

[seg-atlantis-prod]

Error parsing command: EOF found when expecting closing quote

[nachogiljaldo]

@jkoelker / @erikdw apologies for pinging you directly, but I see you reviewed the last 4 PRs that were merged.

I found that it was impossible to get a green build while working on ht ttps://github.com//pull/1330 (which would also need some review) and decided to add this PR to address those flaky tests.

I see main is currently broken, so hopefully this would help with it.