For internet access Plex is by far the easiest. You can use Jellyfin but it can be a lot more effort and can be brittle. Tailscale might be a solution but if you want to share with friends it would mean giving them access to your Tailscale network. Then you’ve got reverse proxies like Nginx Reverse Proxy. This would require buying a domain and configuring something like Cloudflare too, plus port forwarding on your router. Tailscale offers a publically accessible domain now which is similar but you cannot configure the TLD. Still, you’re opening an internet accessible port for a FOSS application and this is far less secure unless you know what you’re doing.

I think this is the last hurdle with the arr setup: discoverability. Plex has tried to jam in something, but it’s far from good. They’re never going to produce a pirate watchlist, so it would have to fall to Jellyfin. What people are seeking is the Netflix experience of “curated” content, spoonfed, and instantly watchable.

For the record I do the same as you. I think the intentionality is a healthy barrier to mindless browsing and consumption, but once people are hooked, it’s hard to wean them off.