I'm confused, many of these examples state that they don't work in my browser (Firefox) - but the live demo works fine? Are the demos poly-filled?

No, it says: "Limited availability".

These green percentage points at the bottom left show how many of the Web audience (IDK by what measurements) runs a browser supporting this feature. A ton of them are even below 50%.

So I suppose it's not "modern CSS", but more like "latest Chrome CSS". Best viewed in Internet Explorer 5.

Absolutely. So no thank you, I won't stop writing CSS like it's 2015 if those features aren't at least supported by all latest browsers.