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It's worth noting that with the f/2.8 you get a constant aperture. That is, you get f/2.8 whether you have the lens wide open or at the long end of the range. The f/3.5-5.6 is a variable aperture lens which means you'll only get f/3.5 at the wide end, and it will stop down as you zoom. Then there's an improved depth of field with the faster lens, improved bokeh, less-no vignetting and overall better optics. For me, the slightly higher price on the f/2.8 was worth it (particularly as I look to sell the 12-60 to pay for some of it!).
I found that anything indoors, in the evening, photographing people, I needed an F2.8 or better lens just to prevent subject blur. Once your shutter speed gets to 1/30s or slower, your photos become slow enough that you'll start catching people breathing, causing them to be a little blurry, even though everything else is sharp. The slower your shutter, the more often this happens. By 1/15s, I found subject blur happening about 50% of the time, and nearly unusable for active kids.
To keep a reasonable shutter speed, you need either a high ISO, which introduces noise/grain in your photos, or you need a better lens, one with F2.8 or better, or you use a flash, which introduces a whole other set of issues.
Like most other photographers, I initially solved this with prime lenses, like the Panasonic 25mm/F1.4 prime, but after a while, I got tired of changing out primes all the time, and eventually bit the bullet to buy an F2.8 zoom.