To answer your questions:
(1) A differentiable structure (DS) is something different. It is possible to have a DS only on a topological space that is a topological manifold (usually defined as a Hausdorff space such that every point has a neighborhood that is topologically equivalent to an open set in Euclidean space R
n (where n is the same for the whole space).
Given that M is a topological manifold M as above, a differentiable structure is designed so that differentiability makes sense on this manifold. Here is what it is, precisely: It is a collection of nonempty open sets V
j of M such that their union
∪j V
j is equal to all of M,
and for each index j there is a mapping
h
j: Vj → R
n
that is a homeomorphism onto its image,
such that for any V
i and V
j with a nonempty intersection V
i ∩ V
j, the mapping
h
ij = h
i o h
j -1: h
j(V
i ∩ V
j) → h
i(V
i ∩ V
j)
(as a mapping from part of R
n to part of R
n) is differentiable.
A manifold together with a differentiable structure on it is a differentiable manifold.
This may seem complicated, but it is part of understanding what a Lie group is. And when you are familiar with it, it will seem simple. For more information, see these notes:
http://www2.math.uu.se/~khf/Otter.pdf.(2) As you can see from (1), yes, a differentiable structure can only be on a manifold.
But: If all the maps h
ij in (1) are C
r (r times differentiable) then M is called a C
r manifold. A C
r manifold is automatically a C
k manifold for all k ≤ r. A
differentiable manifold is just a C
1 manifold. (But it might be a C
r manifold for r > 1.) A smooth manifold means it is a C
r manifold for all r ≥ 1, or in other words all the maps h
ij are
infinitely differentiable (C
∞). All Lie groups are in fact C
∞ by a very deep theorem due to Deane Montgomery, Andrew Gleason and others, completed about 1952. (Not that you asked, but something even stronger is true: All Lie groups are real analytic (C
ω) manifolds, which means that all the maps h
ij can be expressed by power series with real coefficients.)
(3) Yes, sort of. If a differentiable manifold has a group structure on it
and the group operations of multiplication and inverse on it are continuous in its topology, then it is a Lie group. The casual phrasing of your (3) is not precise enough to include this possibility.
——————————————————————————————
To elaborate on that last sentence: Consider the circle (curve) as a topological space. It is the same cardinality as the real line. This mean that using a bijection of the circle to the real line, you could put the additive structure of the reals (as the Lie group
ℝ) on the circle if you wanted to. This group structure would not make the circle into a Lie group, since its multiplication and inverse mappings would be
discontinuous on the circle as a topological space.