Yes, The sample scene has no interaction at all. so no need to hit “play”
The reason it goes dark is because all lighting is only loaded through sequencer, either for animation or stills. The easy thing to do is to mark the default lighting level as “always loaded” instead of blueprint, you can chose from a bunch of predefined lighting conditions we saved there. If you are just exploring the scene in engine just hide and unhide the different levels.
And if you are trying to change the lighting just change the loaded lighting using the sequencer. All Sequences have a predefined lighting set up. if you want to adjust it you can change the level used in “Level Visibility” and or create your own based on the LV_Lighting_Default" level. Then drag and drop the SunSky component always located in the “Environment” folder into the sequencer to adjust as you want.
Regardless of what lighting level you chose, the components will always be in this folder for you to adjust.
Hope this helps. Thanks!