The hardware is the easy part. It's the software that's the tricky part. That Apple II software was something a 5 year old could have fun with, which a REPL would be hard to do. It had enough rails to be usable but enough user input to be creative.
If it's just software, you could always cheat; Apple II emulators exist - you could have exactly that, if you want. (Granted, with worse boot time and hardware integration)
An Apple II emulator is an interesting approach. Would something like LinApple [1] work or are there other options out there that could work better?
Virtual II[0] is paid software and requires a Mac, but it’s probably the best. One of the neat things about sticking with the Apple II is the community that still organizes around it at KansasFest[1].