Yes the bottom line is the cowl is a bit too big for the fuse. The whole reason you are using the balsa sticks is to try to distribute the cowl gap as evenly as possible over the whole perimeter. If you have a perfect gap somewhere, you will have a huge gap somewhere else. So the balsa sticks just make it easy to have a constant gap.
You don't care how much glue oozes out as you are going to sand it off. I recommend the old classic aeropoxy, loctite 9462. It sands pretty well. Fill up the gap 100% or you will have sanding waves later.
After sanding down the glue, you will have a new challenge, you will have to level out that seam, using a polyester filter (lightweight Bondo), or an epoxy filler I prefer. A lot of work left after those cowls are on.