Hello,
In regards to question 1, I believe you can, do correct me if I am wrong though.
I have been playing around and customising components in web studio to include new properties in the component editor. You may modify the edit.get.html.ftl to include new text areas, etc, and bind the new properties to the model in the js file. Then taking these new fields, use them in the view.get.html.ftl to render the region.
Hope I've understood the question correctly.