Ok, there are a few topics that need to be covered here.

Lets start with the dotted line through text. The only purpose of this line is to indicate where the bottom of your Text Frame should be. If you insert text that is bigger than your Text Frame,this is a visual indicater of how much the text area has grown to accomodate the larget text. It has no association with states that I am aware of.

Next, It appears that you have found and are understanding how to use the states panel. It can be tricky. There are two other panlels you should know about: The Graphics Styles panel and the Character Styles panel. These will let you save either graphical setups or textual setups to be applied to other things later. additionally, when you change one of these styles, it will automatically update everything else that uses the style. If you don't see these panels, use the menu command "Window>Graphic Styles" or "Character Styles".

And last, The accordian widget along with a few of the other widgets are slightly different in that the buttons they use are just a Text Frame rather than a Rectangle with a Text Frame sitting on top of them. Editing the Text Frame directly is fine. you should be able to apply any effects to a Text Frame as you would be able to a Rectangle. They also have all the same states, which you can find using the States Panel (Window > States).

Hope that helps.

Glad it worked for you. I think I may understand what your last issue is. the various color paletts can be confusing at first. Take a look at the screenshot attached. The fact that the background was changing means you were using the wrong set of swatches. to change text color, you have ot use the one in the text panel.