If I was starting this as a hobby, my first step would not be to spend several hundred dollars on a tablet and pen. I'd probably grab some sketchbooks and pencils first for <$50 and see if it sticks for more than a month.
Or if you aren't a music person, are you into making movies? Final Cut Pro does have a subscription, but it's only $5 / month and the subscription is easy to start and stop. If your needs are simple, the free iMovie is pretty good.
Or maybe video isn't your thing. Are you a writer or poet? There are a lot of great choices for writing apps and the battery life of the iPad means you can work away from your desk all day.
Or if you like writing software, Swift Playground is fun. I found this to be a great resource:
https://github.com/uraimo/Awesome-Swift-Playgrounds
If you are into photography, Affinity Photo is fun. It doesn't have the AI features that Photoshop has, but for amateurs, it can get you pretty far. Plug in an external drive to your iPad and you can use it with a huge photo library.
And those cheap/free things are only available after dropping $1000 on a new iPad
As for having a better time on the laptop, YMMV. My iPad is my most used computer by a mile.
If you have the disposal income, no need to justify it outside of "it's a cool gadget and I want to play with it."
Just borrow someone else's underused ipad if you want to give it a try.