You can say that a text makes a responder feel happy, sad, etc, and that's all good and well. But I think what you might be missing here is linking it clearly to how a text creates meaning, and why this audience reaction is so important in the first place for said meaning.
A text can create meaning in many ways. The way I think you are trying to explore is reader-response theory - essentially a focus on how the reader responds to the text as opposed to the text itself. While a text can create meaning (somewhat) in this way, being through the response it provokes from the reader, there are a lot of other ways it can create meaning too. Does it create meaning through historical connotations? Maybe it creates meaning through metaphors, or an underlying narrative. There are many ways a text can create meaning, and these are some of the ways you can talk about it. It is possible that reader-response theory simply didn't apply to the question, and it more so wanted you to talk about the text itself rather than the audience. However, if going down this path of reader-response theory is one you are able to follow, I think it would suit the understanding of the text you already have.
However, of course (as with anything in English as I'm sure you know) once you make a claim like "this text makes the audience feel sad" (or whatever it may be), you have to prove it and give the marker a reason to care. As a brief example of trying to do this; "Text XYZ has a rich intertextual historical context of the English Industrial Revolution in the 1820s, alluding to it's author's early 2000s American context. This connection thus creates meaning for its audience through the personal connections and grievous response the audience develops while reading the text, as parallels between the life of the reader and the life of the protagonist are realised through reader-response." While this is a random sentence I've just made up about an imaginary text (so it's not very good, don't judge or use this as an exemplar please lol), it does complete a kind of checklist here. It gives the who (the audience), what (meaning), when (early 2000s / 1820s), where (England / America), and the how (drawing parallels between the contexts).
From what you've said about your response to your question and the feedback received, it seems like you might not be linking this emotions of the impact/effect on the responder to the who/what/when/where/how the text creates meaning. Instead of "this text makes the audience sad", discuss why the text making the audience feel sad is important. Why should we care? What's the point of this? When you know the point of the author provoking an audience response, then you're on your way to discuss how the text creates meaning.
Hopefully this all makes some amount of sense, if it doesn't I'd be happy to give more specific feedback if you have an essay question / response (just pm me or post something here).
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