Manufacturing with JLC only takes a day or two. Delivery speed depends on which courier you choose. I’m in London and often get boards within a week via DHL, or 2 weeks with the cheaper shipping option.

Breadboards are mostly useless these days because very few components of interest are through-hole and many circuits don’t work at all on breadboards (e.g. switching regulators). I’m a hobbyist and virtually never use breadboards. If you just want to play around with simple circuits then sure, use a breadboard. But you are really missing out if you don't take advantage of cheap PCB manufacturing and the enormous range of amazing SMD components.

There’s nothing “special” about a hot air station. I paid £35 for mine and it works fine.

It's easy to learn how to solder SMD components. Beginners will screw it up, but that's the whole point of being a beginner, right? Solder bridges are very easy to fix with flux.

>and disregard the "special offer" garbage that only applies to your first order

It doesn't only apply to your first order. I've ordered at the $2 price many times. In any case, there are many Chinese PCB fabs of approximately equivalent quality, and you can almost always find one that has a promotional rate of some kind.