The spell creates fire and projects it away from you in a cone. The difference between this spell and, say, fireball, is that the fire is no longer magical once it's projected, and thus overcomes Spell Resistance.

Natural fires require fuel to maintain themselves for long. Once the spell is no longer maintaining the flame, it should quickly dissipate, assuming it wasn't cast into a field of dry grass or over a pool of oil. Note that lesser acid orb from Complete Arcane and Spell Compendium is also Conjuration(Creation) with an Instantaneous duration and creates neither an object nor a creature, simply a (non-magical, after leaving the caster) spell effect.

Orb of force is clearly meant to work like orb of acid, although this explanation is going to belong more on Physics.SE than RPG.SE. Force, in real world physics, is transferred between objects when they touch. Ergo, rather than "breaking" or "bouncing off", an orb composed entirely of force should be absorbed by a target (or by the ground or scenery on a miss) on impact. This is what does the damage of the spell - raw kinetic force being transferred to a relatively-stationary target.

Of course, the spell in this case probably shouldn't have the [Force] descriptor, as DnD [Force] has absolutely nothing to do with real-world force, as indicated by the fact that [Force] has full effect on incorporeal creatures and force should have none. If you (or your DM) want to rule orbs of [Force] continue to exist after striking a ghost or object, go for it. (However, both [Force] and force can be assumed to be weightless and noncorporeal, so rather than falling to the ground or filling a ball pit, they should probably keeping bouncing like that one scene in Men in Black until it escapes to outer space...)

One Line of This Spell Makes These Ideas Difficult

There is an essential phrase you (originally) left out of your description of the Shape Water cantrip (Elemental Evil Player's Companion, p. 21, bold added).

• You change the water’s color or opacity. The water must be changed in the same way throughout. This change lasts for 1 hour.

All of your ideas seem to involve selectively changing part of the water to one color, and other parts to another color (e.g. changing the water on the legal document to spell out different words in some places, changing the color to be white in some parts of the die and black on others, changing the water to be white on some parts of the card and red on others to represent an ace, etc.). But since "the water must be changed in the same way throughout," this would most likely be impossible.

It might be possible to write a specific message in water on a paper or card, and then turn all that water black and opaque (or clear) as you desired. But you couldn't alter the message to fit your needs. You could argue that you can "cause the water to form into simple shapes and animate" and thus rewrite the messages or cards as you see fit. But "simple shapes" tends to mean polygons (i.e. closed shapes like triangles and squares), and usually would rule out more intricate shapes like writing.

Finally, it's quite debatable whether a wet card would be considered "an area of water" (or whether a wet document would be anything other than suspicious). You've suggested (in a comment) that the card would not be wet, but covered in "a light layer of colored frost." Note, however, that the spell does not give you the ability to melt ice, but only to freeze water. And ice cannot be moved or altered in appearance or shape by this spell: only water.