I think you can learn a basic LAMP/LEMP stack in a few hours or days. You can spin one up on bare metal or a VM using XAMPP or similar, then connect it to various other layers like a DNS provider, Varnish or redis, a commercial CDN, etc. That shows you the basic functionality of each part of the system and how they connect, without the overlying complexity of containers and such.

You can replace each part of it as you need to (like using postgres instead of MySQL or Ruby or Python instead of PHP).

This definitely can't hyperscale, but it's how small and medium websites all used to be made. Good way to learn by doing if that works for you.