Stylist? I'm partial to Gene Juarez. Sorry. Shouldn't beat up on the new guy. You can buy more Stylast on Music Direct. Sorry, sorry! Couldn't resist!
The stylus is the teeny tiny little point at the end of a little straight thing called the cantilever, which goes inside the big thing you are probably talking about which is called the phono cartridge. I have to say probably because cartridges are all different and some of them you can easily remove and replace the stylus/cantilever assembly. Slides right out.
Seriously, unless there is something seriously wrong then I would concentrate on getting the table set up and running and see how it sounds. Get yourself some Stylast (or whatever, just get something to clean the stylus and get into the habit of doing this after every side) and a record brush, or even better Walker Enzyme cleaning solutions, but whatever, point is get set up with all the little accessories and habits first. Otherwise you get a new cartridge, start dragging it across a bunch of dirty records, table not set up very well, waste of money.
Also if you are super new, do you have a phono stage? Records are different in that they need a special input. Look for a Phono input on the back of your amp. Without this you will need to buy a phono stage.
One more reason I say wait and learn before running out and buying a cartridge. This stuff ain't hard, but it is a lot different than hooking up a CD player. That's the bad news. The good news is when you do learn how to do it there is a whole lot of performance lurking in those records and you can bring a lot of it out for free just by doing things right.
The lid is almost certainly a worn/broken spring inside the hinge. Usually have to hunt around for a replacement hinge.
