For anyone seeing this, I got question 2 figured out.
I had to put in the 'mb_' followed by the Meta Box Settings page ID, followed by the Custom Field Group ID, followed by the Custom Field ID.
In my case
{mb_sweeps-settings_dates_start_date:m/d/Y}
And the ':' followed by the date format I wanted to display on the front end.
Hope others might find this helpful if you come across a similar need.👍