Bill wrote:

b) open tab groups, saw there was an invisible little box in purple on
blue that said something like name the group, called it fred, closed the
tab group screen, looked for fred but he was nowhere to be seen.

Will I have to read the instructions?

Once you open tab groups, each tab you previously had open shows as a
small version of itself, you drag tabs on top of each other to create a
new group, once a group is created you can name it and drag tabs between
groups, or nest groups into groups etc, click on a tab to "zoom" back to
that tab, with the other tabs in its group active ...