Also noticed within the members profile area, after logged in, I'm told to login on the right side of the page... curious as to why?

You see the label above the unit, along with the fact that it's opaque. This means it's limited to certain usergroups, and you aren't one of them. (In this case, for "Guests".) Feel free to remove it if you wish -- it doesn't really serve that useful a purpose at the moment... But you could change the text to encourage guests to register, for example.

If you want to make profiles off limits from guests, simply change the page access permissions under Layout > Edit and exclude "Guests" from the permission list.

I was actually logged in as the admin and assumed that had all access.

As you would understand, my site won't have guests looking around. Everyone will have to register one way or another.

Yes; and because you were an admin, it showed as opaque and with a label. All content is visible to admin, but content that doesn't fall within usergroups specified with Admin access permission is shown separately as in your screenshot. Otherwise, it is only visible to usergroup: guests.

gotcha