On kubuntu 11.10, using gigolo .4.1, whenever I copy a uri, I get something like "smb://xx.xx.xx.xx/", instead of an actual mounted gvfs share, ~/.gvfs/something on server/. Opening up in a file browser gets the same bad uri. As I understand it, gigolo should be a frontend to gvfs, so it should use gvfs uris.
"smb://xx.xx.xx.xx/" actually is the GVfs URI. ~/.gvfs/something on server/ is only local filesystem path based on the Fuse mountpoint which is created by GVfs if the GVfs fuse backend (usually a package named like gvfs-fuse) is installed and is meant only for backwards compatibility with non-GVfs applications to operate with POSIX file IO. Again, THE GVfs URI is "smb://xx.xx.xx.xx/" and rather modern file managers like Nautilus, Thunar and PcManFM know how to handle these URIs. The GIT version of Gigolo (to be released soon) contains a new command "Open Terminal here" which actually uses the Fuse local filesystem path to set it as the working directory for the started terminal. Maybe this would help you better in your (not mentioned) use case. What file manager do you use?
I use dolphin file manager, and while that is working with the smb URIs in the most recent release without too many bugs, everytime I try to open up a video or similar large file from an SMB URI, the video either fails to play or the entire will transfer to /tmp before it plays, depending on the player used. Under the ~/.gvfs URI, the video simply streams like it should without issue. KDE seems to have a lot of problems with handling SMB type URIs.
Unfortunately, all this is unrelated to Gigolo. It sounds rather like problems of KDE with GVfs. Though I could add an option to use the Fuse filesystem path rather than the URI when enabled. Then 'Copy URI' and opening file browser would use ~/.gvfs/...