As I’m furthering my investigation, I think it might be the space for the caption/title/description that is showing? I don’t use those for the gallery or lightbox, so indeed, they remain blank/empty.
But shouldn’t the content make use of it and fill up that space then?
So my question now is: how do I get the content (image in lightbox) to fill out all available space in the browser window?
Secondary matter of getting image to open full size in new tab upon click from lightbox is also still unresolved, but for the layout of the site, the lightbox-filling-browserwindow is most urgent.
The search for answers continues!