Here I have a manually created table using textboxes inside of a list object:

The problem with this is that if one of the textboxes has too much text only it will grow while the others will remain the same height.
Now the other issue is you can’t merge two cells in the same column (vertical merge). Is there a way using a combination of controls that I could replicate what is in the picture such that if the Release Description textbox has too much text in it and it grows the other controls will grow along with it?
Two suggestions:
1) If you want to keep your current workaround, and wish to avoid the growing of your textboxes you can set the
CanGrowproperty toFalse.A UI solution for the long text will be using
ToolTip: Lets say that your textbox can contain only 60 chars, in the textbox expression use the following:=iif(Len(Fields!YourField.Value)>60, Left(Fields!YourField.Value,57) + "...",Fields!YourField.Value)means that only 57 charecters will be displayed in the text box, the full text should be display will hovering the textbox (using tooltip).
2) If you want to merge cells vertically you can do some workarounds.
You can place a table inside another table’s cell, that way using several tables you can perform your desired output.
Attaching sample of using table within another table (I use 3 tables):