hello Tom,
first I wanna say I own two cdj2000mk1 and not the nexus but it should be the same. No you can't jump from 4 bar loop to 8 bar loop by using only cdj2000. You need to use the mousepad in order to do that. Same goes for going back or forward a loop. To be honest I use a NI X1 controller for these Traktor features which is very simple to use without touching my laptop.
Now concerning the brake and vinyl speed knobs, No there is no functionality of these two in Traktor. The reverse/forward doesn't do anything too. However you can manually assign them to other Traktor functionality.