The fact that it’s battery powered shouldn’t have anything to do with it. There are many battery powered devices that work just fine with smartthings, including, as you mentioned, the minimote.
Where the confusion may have come in is that the 9500 is not a switch itself, it’s a remote that is supposed to control something else. So it doesn’t have a status of “on” or “off.” Again, in this it’s just like the minimote.
The status would be shown for the device that it is actuating. So if you have a master switch, you should see the master switch change from off to on when you press the 9500.
In the use case that we are discussing, you would see the smart bulbs change status from off to on. The 9500 doesn’t really have a status other than active.
As far as the 9542 – z there are definitely some community members using it specifically to control smart bulbs ( via The smartthings hub as we discussed, not through controlling the current load)