Objects in states appear in different spots in preview/published course vs spot in slide

I am trying to let my students pick a virtual lab partner. I set up a variable for each choice and the correct partner appears on the next slide (each partner is a different state). Since each partner's conversation style is different - a different caption is also part of each state. My difficulty is that the captions and characters appear in different places in the preview and published content than they appear on the slide. It is just enough different to look bad. It is driving me crazy especially since I would like to continue using states for these different characters/captions throughout the module. Does anyone know what is going on and how to fix it? I attached my file. Thank you!