Under investigation in this paper is the higher-order nonlinear Schrodinger and Maxwell–Bloch system which describes the wave propagation in an erbium-doped nonlinear fiber with higher-order effects including the fourth-order dispersion and quintic non-Kerr nonlinearity. The breather and rogue wave (RW) solutions are shown that they can be converted into various soliton solutions including the multi-peak soliton, periodic wave, antidark soliton, M-shaped soliton, and W-shaped soliton. In addition, under different values of higher-order effect, the locus of the eigenvalues on the complex plane which converts breathers or RWs into solitons is calculated.