Cannot get the color panel to work

In the colors area, I’ve unlocked colors, I’ve changed them. No matter what I do, it has no effect on any of the images, any of the colors that I pick throughout my design from the right panel. The color swatches on the right panel area for background and so on do not change even though I changed them in the colors area.
Even adding fonts or changing sizes of fonts or basically anything in this colors panel doesn’t ever work.
I’ve tried six different new designs from scratch and all six times this panel has no effect on anything. How can I get this panel to work so I can actually change the colors to what I want them to be?