Hello @peter.b!
Apologies for this, I can make a feature request for styling, validation and label.
In regards to the validation rules, are you using it has a subcomponent of a form component?
The form component does have a checkbox that requires all input fields to be valid, I just did some quick testing and it seems that the query on button click still runs with the rich text editor inside of the form being empty, so just wanted to confirm that is the behavior you are experiencing that needs to be fixed as well!