Thank you very much! 
I followed your instructions and it worked!
1.- went to my dashboard.defold.com page and clicked ‘Add Project’, entered a project name and description and checkmarked ‘No, I’ll start from a blank slate’, then clicked 'Save’
2.- opened my local defold IDE, logged in, clicked ‘Open Project’ and selected the project I just created, then added a new branch (named it ‘master’)
3.- selected ‘game.project’ on the Project Explorer and ctrl-clicked it (in Mac) and selected ‘Show in Finder’ in the pop-up menu
4.- in the Finder deleted all contents (there was no .git nor .internal folders, or at least I could not see them) and replaced them with the unzipped content
5.- went back to defold IDE and a few seconds later it automatically refreshed the contents
6.- pressed cmd-B and I was running the examples project!
Thank you very much again! 