I have an iPad mini 6 and it's awesome. However, my parents are still doing OK with an iPad 6th gen and an iPad Pro, although I'm not sure which generation other than that thing is huge. Both of theirs' still has Lightning and they have lots of inexpensive Lightning cables that they keep around and use with their iPhones.
The newest models all use USB-C ports, other than the iPad 9th gen, which my child got as a gift and loves using. So USB-C might create issues if you're tied to Lightning everything and don't have other USB-C devices. However, it's not that big a deal to get new cables and even use existing USB-A power sources. The latest is iPadOS 16, which is kind of an odd naming because all updates seem to be the same time as iOS updates. I suspect that they're really developed as one operating system, but then they're customized for iPhone and iPad specific operations.
All the newer iPad models don't have a home button any more. I'm not sure what the deal is with yours, but even some older iPad models have iPadOS and can use gestures (swiping up from the bottom) in place of pressing the home button to exit an application. So it might be possible to practice these things.