At the moment, no. Lava is only used as an ingredient to make obsidian blocks for the portal (combine lava + water in a chemical plant). At some point soon I would like to add more functionality for lava like you mentioned, maybe it can be used as a heat source or barrels of it can be used as fuel in a furnace. I will look into adding that for a future release.
As for moving materials between overworked and the nether, you'll have to figure something out. Currently the only way to do that is to bring them back and forth yourself in your inventory, or download another mod that lets you transport stuff between surfaces. I have been considering adding functionality to allow items (and maybe also mobs) to go through the portals like how it functions in MC, but that is going to take some time to figure out and implement so I can't make any promises that will happen soon.