So I did some investigation into the ASCX files. I compared Step1.ascx to confirm.ascx and I noticed that the first table tags were slightly different.
<table align="left"> confirm.ascx
vs.
<table cellpadding="3" width="95%"> step1.ascx
Step1.ascx displays correctly, so I just modifed the table tag in the confirm page and now I see the full container, the background is changing correctly. Not sure why this worked, or what the main issue still was for the container not really being displayed. Maybe a conflict of styles between the module and skin? Weird.