I'm more into wanting to a have a solid understanding of the bitcoin related software so the node in a box solutions are not attractive to me.

I self-host bitcoin core, sparrow, electrum, and etc but my lightning node is hosted on Oracle Cloud using their free-forever offering.

I've put some articles on https://yakihonne.com/ on how to start this journey.   I could put some more detailed articles out there, but my sense is most people don't have the skills or desire to take this journey.