to return: to go back to a place or person you came from
This is a plain travel word. It describes someone heading back the way they came, retracing their steps to a home, a city, or the people they left. It is one of Luke's favorite words: he uses it far more than any other New Testament writer, again and again to move his characters home after an errand is done. The shepherds return from the manger, Mary returns from visiting Elizabeth, the disciples return to Jerusalem after the ascension.
Almost every time, the returning is literal and physical, so the word carries no special weight of its own beyond direction: back, not onward. What matters is usually where the person is going back to and what has happened to change them on the way, which is why so many of these returns are wrapped in joy or praise (the healed leper comes back giving glory to God, the disciples come back rejoicing).
A few times the same word is used for turning back to a condition rather than a place. Someone can turn away from a commitment they had made, or a thing can be said to go back to the state it was in. The picture is the same, a reversal of direction, but the destination is a situation instead of a location.