Problems Saving with Widgetized Pages

I have 2 annoying problems with widgetized pages. Here’s the first: certain changes to widgets aren’t saved. Example:

I go into a widgetized page, and want to change the URL of a link in one of the widgets. Here’s how I do it: I click ‘Edit Page’, click ‘Add/Edit Widgets’, click pencil icon above relevant widget, click ‘Edit Content’ button, click link text, click ‘edit’ pencil icon, change link target, click ‘enter’ icon, click ‘Save & Close.’ After this process, the “Saved” icon at the top of the customizer screen

does not change

to “Save and Publish.” The change is NOT SAVED, even though I hit “Save & Close.” If I click the ‘Edit Content’ button again, my changes are visible until I click the link text again, then they disappear! It took me a while to figure out what was happening. I’d exit the customizer/editor thinking that the changes had been made, but they weren’t.

Here’s how I finally got the changes to stick. Same process as before: I click ‘Edit Page’, click ‘Add/Edit Widgets’, click pencil icon above relevant widget, click ‘Edit Content’ button, click link text, click ‘edit’ pencil icon, change link target, click ‘enter’ icon,

make a trivial change to the text,

click ‘Save & Close.’ After this process, the “Saved” icon at the top of the customizer screen

does change

to “Save and Publish,” and I can save normally.

My second problem is related, and I’m hoping there’s a simple solution. I can’t seem to find the way to make a widgetized page point to a different widget sidebar. Here’s what I’m doing:

From the normal ‘Edit’ screen for a page, I can see the Custom Field “page_sidebar” and am able to change it manually, then hit the ‘Update’ button for the individual field. The page preview shows that everything is alright, so I hit ‘Update’ (or ‘Publish’). Once I do this, the Custom Field reverts to its old value.