Better tankiness? The MR and Armor page. HP might be proven to be more effective than armor defensively for runes, but I think once you incorporate health regen and health pots, etc... this probably isn't true. Not to mention that even if you're fighting only physical or only magic damage in lane, you're probably facing the other from the jungler or the other laners and thus the other defensive runes aren't wasted.
Easier time? the AP and flat HP page. The defensive difference is probably pretty small, especially if you don't build any armor or MR at all (since your enemies will probably have enough penetration to completely ignore your defenses anyways, in which case health is definitely better), and the AP will aid you in bullying your lane opponent and having better offense late game.
I'd recommend going with scaling CDR blues assuming you're playing champions that use CDR and would build differently if you didn't need more CDR (e.g. with runes and masteries for 20%, you only need Morello to hit the cap), and flat HP yellows to survive the laning phase. This is expensive (which is why I don't run it yet) so just go with the armor and mr you probably have from an ADC or jungle page until you can afford them all.
Overall, I think flat runes are more important than scaling because runes make a much larger percent different early game than late and thus it's much better to eke every advantage you can out of them early. The only exception I've found to this is CDR, where you're mana gated early game and thus don't need CDR but CDR can make huge differences in mid-late game (e.g. having your ultimate up a few seconds early could have turned a fight, or getting a second rotation of spells off early could have saved an ally or killed an enemy). If you really don't like scaling CDR glyphs then go with AP (flat or scaling - remember flat may not give as much late but it can give a bigger advantage early that leads to more late overall).