##The django static files (how I understand them):
I will refer to the staticfiles app as 'staticfiles' in this document... ie, staticfiles gets installed as an app in django when django.contrib.staticfiles is in settings.py's INSTALLED_APPS variable.
I think the confusion with staticfiles is based on the fact that the documentation mashes a bunch of different things together, specifically whether or not staticfiles is used to serve files in 1. development mode and/or 2. production mode. Additionally, its 3. capabilities outside of serving static files, the staticfiles app could also through the use of the python manage.py collectstatic command collect your static files from all sorts of different locations (local file system, cloud, etc) and download them to what's specified in STATIC_ROOT. You could setup your production http server to serve the files out of STATIC_ROOT for STATIC_URL after they've been collected there.
If your project is in development mode (