Regarding management UIs I’m a fan of Cockpit (github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit cockpit-project.org)

Regarding management UIs for docker I believe most use either portainer (github.com/portainer/portainer www.portainer.io) or dockge (github.com/louislam/dockge dockge.kuma.pet).

Regarding Samba most NAS devices simplify it a lot, but it isn’t that complicated to do on Fedora either and once you’ve got it setup it’s not gonna need a lot of tinkering. (docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/samba/)

Whether you invest in a NAS or not I recommend you invest in a USB disk large enough to act as a backup for the storage disks. That’s not an investment for later but one you want right away. And do make certain it takes backups, not replicates data. A popular option is Borg Backup (github.com/borgbackup/borg www.borgbackup.org)
If I went for a NAS I would Borg Backup the laptop to the NAS and then use the NAS own backup software to backup to the USB.