NEO

Rare? The Flair Neo is available on Amazon for 120 bucks with overnight delivery where I live. If you mean machines with boilers, there are definitely fewer lever than E61 options but lever machines are dead simple to maintain. I completely disassembled and re-sealed my vintage LaPavoni with basic hand tools and OEM gaskets purchased from Amazon.

Is the flair neo available there? If so, it's pretty great 

I have the Flair, which is similar and it works great

If you want long lasting, get a Flair manual machine and a kettle. The o-rings last a decade of daily use and are fairly standard so you can replace as needed. Otherwise, there is nothing that can fail. 

What is your budget? The profitec pro800 and the flair neo are both lever machines but are completely different beasts.

A flair is great if you like straight espresso shots, but for milk drinks it seems like a very suboptimal solution.

If they just want to learn about coffee notes and tasting: Maybe something like the Flair Neo (a completely manual machine, as in you pull a lever to make the coffee) and a KinGrinder k6 will be just over 200 combined. A scale will still be needed, and you can't do frothing with this setup.

I went from a Flair Neo to Flair Classic. It’s great for me, I make 2 shots per day. It can be time consuming doing more, but you can make it work. I love it because it takes up less space. Looking back id start with a Classic over the Neo

The only machine in that price point to my knowledge that can do 9 bars is the Flair Neo.

Get the cheapest Flair. Your real problem is the grinder. I recommend Kingrinder K6, but it takes some work to grind for espresso