What does ending words in this context mean here and how would they be used?
It's a strictly Japanese thing. It's a word that gets tacked onto the end of the sentence.
Desu is the most common one, since it actually has a legitimate meaning in the language. "That is."
There are also the the desu derivatives, like dayo-ne (that is, huh?), or "so dayo" (that really is) or combining them into "so dayo-ne?"
I've also heard some strange ones like nano-pa, and Gosarimasu, which also have meanings, but don't necessarily fit well with most sentences.
The Japanese trend is to say who's the speaker by assigning an ending word to a character, have that character just about always use that ending word, and have that character be the only one to ever use that ending word.
Some Japanese writers take it to the extreme of having such strange ending words I swear they're just making up words.
EDIT: There are also a few ending words that tell you a little about the position of the person talking. For instance, "degozaru" and "dearimasu." They are actually the respective male and female speech versions of the desu-derivative ending phrase that's considered appropriate for a high-class servant, although "degozaru" can also be used by samurai in addition to butlers. However, "dearimasu" would only be used by maids.
(Oh, yes, and that's one other interesting thing about Japanese. It's a speaker-based gendered language. As in, you use some words differently depending upon whether you as the speaker are male or female. This is different from a subject-based gendered language like Spanish where you might say the same word differently depending on whether you are talking about a male or a female subject.)