You could consider an in browser notebook to get your cost down to near nothing - it depends a bit on what kind of tasks your students do whether they fit in the browser (one wouldn't train a large neural network in one for instance)
There's Starboard (which I'm building, it's built specifically for the browser and can integrate into a larger app deeply) and JupyterLite (the closest you will get to JupyterLab in the browser), either can be a good choice depending on your requirements. Both use Pyodide for the Python runtime.
There's Starboard (which I'm building, it's built specifically for the browser and can integrate into a larger app deeply) and JupyterLite (the closest you will get to JupyterLab in the browser), either can be a good choice depending on your requirements. Both use Pyodide for the Python runtime.
[1]: https://github.com/gzuidhof/starboard-notebook, demo: https://starboard.gg
[2]: https://jupyterlite.readthedocs.io/en/latest/