Going from your suggestions I was able to find a workaround to change the device's state with just one click, so thank you for that.

For the second problem, it seems that while HA sends a command instantly, it only actually changes states on the dashboard once the device sensors update, which seems to be hard coded to happen about every 30 seconds. I am using an integration from HACS (Custom VeSync) though, so I feel like the problem is more likely to do with my own setup. Then again HA would previously just send the requested command no matter what the state was before...

Either way I'm not really familiar with Github beyond reading release notes and readmes.

Edit: Reading further into the integration I'm using, I realized that it relies on cloud polling. I wonder if there's a way to make Home Assistant assume that a command went through, change states immediately, and then confirm the change with the next polling cycle, rather than just waiting. Unfortunately I don't know how to implement something like this.