Ruling Questionable Evolutions

[Freakachu123]

Few questions that I have been unclear about with speedy evolving

Is it legal to play a basic pokemon on the bench, use a rare candy and evolve to its stage 2 form, all in the same turn?

Is it legal to play a helix fossil on my bench, attach a water energy and successfully use aqua reaction pokebody to evolve to Omanyte all on the same turn?

And when these such abilities say on the card "This counts as evolving," what is exactly meant?

 

[PMJ]

Yes and yes.

"This counts as evolving" means that the evolution counts towards that Pokemon's 1 normally allowed evolution for the turn (you could not evolve it again that same turn if it had a further evolution).