Yes, you can do a full install of Ubuntu to your flash drive and there is no difference whatsoever between it and a hard drive installation. As for features there will also be no difference. Ubuntu is an operating system and it does not matter if it is on a flash or hard drive, it still operates the same way. Think of your flash drive as just being another hard drive attached to your computer.
I have ubuntu working for me on a flash drive. Here is how I did it.

I have Ubuntu installed on 64GB Sandisk flash drive. It is a persistent (as Ubuntu terms it) or permanent install. I can take it anywhere and plug it into any computer or laptop and be running my on desktop with all my files, emails, work, everything right there ready to go. To do this I burned Ubuntu to a DVD. Then I plugged in my flash drive and booted up to the DVD. I started the install and pointed it to my flash drive. I created the following partitions. 1. a boot partition /boot and gave it 250mb of space I choose ext4 for the format 2. a root partition /root and gave it 12000mb space and ext4 format 3. a swap partition /swap and gave it 4096mb of space (it will format to swap) 4 a home partition /home and gave it the rest of the space and formatted it to ext4.

Then I just finished the install and it runs beautifully, very stable, no problems. Note: I gave 4096mb to the swap but I have never seen Ubuntu use more than 1 1/2gb of swap and that was only for a second. I just allocated 4gb of swap in case...you never know but you probably will never need it and you can easily use 2048mb (2gb) swap with no troubles ever. I have 16gb ram in my computer. You will not have to worry about ntfs or whatever as windows reads all of my drive easily and vice versa.
Another thing I should mention is that you cam plug your ubuntu drive into any computer anywhere in the world and it will boot up and operate which is something Windows cannot do.