completely unavailable to obtain in the US

vinted/ebay

3G is being phased out everywhere

2G fallback.

specific apps that relate to taxi services and talking with my group

Yeah. That’s a no.

I find it annoying that everything’s an app now, when it could also still be a website.

This is probably not what you want, but I sometimes use a 2017 Nokia 3310, the one with 3G.

There are not really apps on that(IRC only twitter and facebook, and I don’t know if those still work), but you can install/upgrade to the latest version of opera mini, which does offer access to (some) more apps.

To be clear this is on my to do list. In the past I just used it as a dumbphone.

Thanks to smart phones, this generation of kids is roughly as tech literate as boomers.

I wouldn’t get your hopes up.