Whatever the apostles knew, or thought they understood, they didn't share any of it with Mary Magdalene. So for all she knew, Jesus was still dead, and somebody took his body.
It's unclear whether she recognized the two men she saw as angels at the time, but St. John is telling us that they were angels. This is another one of those times where St. John and the rest of the disciples understood this better after it happened. When the angels speak to her, you can almost hear the voice of Jesus. Usually, when someone says, "Woman…" in the Scriptures, what follows is an important moment. (See again John 2:1-12)
Mary Magdalene still thinks that someone has taken the body of Jesus. She turns and actually sees him standing there, but she doesn't recognize him. I think Jesus kept himself hidden until the right moment, just as he had done with the two disciples walking along the road to Emmaus, as recorded by St. Luke (see Luke 24:13-35). Although scholars rightly call the other three Gospels--Matthew, Mark, and Luke--the "synoptic" Gospels, because they record many of the same things, (literally means something like, "with the same eyes" in Greek) St. John's Gospel is not all that different from the other three. It's in less chronological order, for spiritual reasons, some of which St. John will tell us. Even so, I think the idea of this Gospel being radically different than the other three has not helped ordinary people to receive all these accounts with faith.
There are people you know who can say your name, and you immediately know it's them, even if you don't see them with your eyes. Think about how tenderly Jesus must have said Mary Magdalene's name, and how shocked she must have been, but also full of joy.
When someone in that culture calls someone, "Teacher," it is intimate and reverent. I still don't call my kindergarten teacher by her first name; I can't do it. If she made me I would try, but I would probably fail. In the culture of that time and place, the expectation of that respect is even greater.
The emotion of seeing Jesus alive again was surely overwhelming. After he's been dead, Mary Magdalene might've thought that she'd better hold on, so she didn't lose him again.
Jesus tells her not to hold on to him, basically because his mission is not finished. But neither is her mission finished, because Jesus sends her to deliver a message to the apostles, that he is alive. There is a better than average chance that some of them did not believe her when she told the story. I think it speaks to the truthfulness of the Gospel accounts, that none of the writers eliminated the stories of women as witnesses to Jesus. There are quite a few people even today who have trouble respecting women and taking them seriously, and the culture from which the apostles came is not too much different than ours in that way. If St. John or the others wanted to manipulate people with a made-up story about Jesus, they probably would have told it differently to a sexist culture.
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