@Rikifive
Well, I heard somewhere that an actual MLP:FiM worker said that Twilight would not outlive her friends, but my interpretation of this is that Twilight long outlived her friends, and I think those statues could very well be her friends. The elements are embedded in every statue's base, so perhaps Celestia wanted to preserve Twilight's friends' bodies by turning them to stone after they died. It appears as though Celestia may have offered Twilight the option of friend or forever, and Twilight chose friends. Which explains why her cutie mark is on the floor of that room. It's not just a room to honor everything they did for Equestria, it's a room that possesses high magical power that only an alicorn can activate. From the looks of it, she used the elements of harmony to rid herself of her wings and her "forever" to break her friends free and breathe life back into them. She collapses because of such powerful magic and manages to sit back up when her friends are standing in front of her, living and breathing.
That's at least my interpretation~!