How do I get WiFi and phone service, technology in the basement

Visually: white, flat, without rod antennas, plain, inconspicuous

Just use the Unifi, that's the safest choice. For an inconspicuous design, you can turn off this blue ring LED.

Unifi is anything but complicated.
You need the Unifi Controller for the initial setup and further provisioning. You can also install it on a basic Windows laptop. It's free. The purchasable controller only makes sense if you want to use the complete proprietary Unifi ecosystem. For logging, monitoring, etc.
The APs themselves have a wizard that guides you through the setup. It's really simple.
On the ceiling, it can look like this:

Just take the Unifi, that way you make the fewest mistakes.