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Ah, the eternal battle: iOS or Android?
Sorry to hear, that your LineageOS experience wasn’t that great. I use it for a few years and the only thing not working for me is NFC payments. But it’s kinda expected of a phone without Google apps — no Google Pay either.
I was wondering about your idea of dumb technology exclusively, and how that was going to work out for you. Here in the southern USA I can still bank without using a phone app. However beginning August 15, they will be requiring two factor authentication, by phone or text to log in.
If your main usecase is to occasionaly access several smartphone-only apps, maybe you could try dual-booting x86 port of Android [https://www.android-x86.org/] or even better running it inside a VM, while there is also an option of live usb.
As far as emulators go, Genymotion [https://www.genymotion.com/download/] is a powerful cross-platform solution, free for personal use. If you’re on Linux, take a look at Anbox [https://anbox.io/] too.
Also, you don’t have to open a Google account in order to install apps on any Android, just use an alternative Aurora store [https://auroraoss.com/] which pulls in APKs directly from Play Store.