You can use Nuitka [1] to compile your Python app. It's going to be fairly weak against someone trying to prise out your logic with a decompiler, especially since a lot of Python metadata is left in there (e.g. for generating stack traces), but good enough for most purposes, and unlike some "compilers" it does not have a hidden copy of the original Python buried in it.

If you use standalone mode (not onefile) then all the Qt DLLs and pyd files (which are basically also DLLs) are left separate, which lets you satisfy the LGPL.

[1] https://nuitka.net/

Edit: The above is about deploying your app. For developing your app, feel free to use whatever flavour of the month pip wrapper you want (personally I'm still happy with vanilla virtualenv). You can assemble widgets and layouts into forms either using code or using UI files created in Qt Designer, just as in C++. I've not tried using QML.

for the python environment I use poetry which I think works well (https://python-poetry.org/). As for the licensing (and someone correct me if this is wrong), you have the option to go with PyQt which is GPL licensed and will require you to open source your code, if you go with PySide which is LGPL licensed you do not (unless you make modifications to the Qt code itself which I suppose you're not). So the latter is the better option if you just want to distribute an app.

You don't need to use Qml at all and can use QtWidgets instead which is just their traditional toolkit, or you can combine both. I tried Qml for parts of the UI and it's fairly straight forward.

I think QtCreator supports python now so if you want a complete IDE with graphical tools that works well, I just used my normal editor.