@scottinpollock is right, it seems… I was trying to get something similar to work earlier today, and Smartthings support confirmed there’s no way to get status updates from zigbee bulbs when their status changes with a physical power switch.
I don’t fully understand why that’s true, however… it seems like ST should be able to poll my bulbs periodically and request status updates. If ST gets no response from a bulb, assume it is “Off”. If ST gets some valid response, update the activity log with that status.
At the very least, a manual refresh should update the status, but that doesn’t work either. I’m new to this whole zigbee/z-wave scene, so sorry if this is obvious… I just don’t understand from a software perspective why it’s not possible.