About the word 'melawat'

According to Kamus Dewan, 4th Edition, 'melawat' means 'pergi mengunjungi (negara asing, dll) [go to visit other countries] and 'menziarahi jenazah' [visit the dead]

The example given for 'melawat', that is 'melawat ke Jepun' shows that it is an intransitive verb.
Hence, it would wrong to write 'Saya akan melawat negeri Kedah pada hujung minggu ini.' It is correct to write 'Saya akan melawat ke negeri Kedah pada hujung minggu ini. [I will visit the state of Kedah this weekend.]

Alternatively the above sentence can be written as 'Saya akan melawati negeri Kedah pada hujung minggu ini.' because 'melawati' is a transitive verb.

As for the second meaning of 'melawat', you can also use it to mean 'visit the sick' such as 'Ali akan melawat neneknya yang sakit itu.' Here 'melawat' is treated as a transitive verb when used in this sense but it has no passive voice because 'dilawat' does not exist in Malay. If you need to do exercise for changing from active voice to passive voice, it would be better to word the above sentence as:
'Ali akan menziarahi neneknya yang sakit itu.' [Ali will visit his sick grandmother.] Then you can turn it into the passive voice as follows:
Neneknya yang sakit itu akan diziarahi oleh Ali.

To sum up the discussion, 'melawat' can be used to mean visiting a place but it must be followed by the preposition 'ke' whereas it can be used directly in front of 'jenazah' [the dead]or ' orang yang sakit'[the sick] to mean to visit 'the dead' or 'the sick'.

So much for the word 'melawat'