Can’t format content of Rich Text Editor in Template

Good question for your first question! Try running the variable through the_contnet Filter – You can use it like this:

$editor_value = get_post_meta( $post->ID, "PLUGIN_VALUE", true ); 
echo apply_filters( 'the_content', htmlspecialchars_decode( $editor_value ) );

I believe what’s happening is that whenever you save your postmeta, it is being escaped as it should and converted to special characters htmlspecialchars() so that it can properly be saved to the database. By running the decode it should output the expected HTML.