100% agree on the vscode part. I like vscode a lot for various reasons and use it for various programming languages including Python, but the debugging console is such a pain to use. Would love an IPython integration.
One thing I've done to provide an enhanced debug experience to debugging in VScode. From the debugging console run:
from IPython import embed; embed()
This will open iPython in the terminal window with the state of your program at the debug point loaded in. You do need to "quit()" it before moving on in the debugger though.
I was using IPython to develop code by inserting the REPL to the right point in my project. But more recently I got used to VSCode and enjoy its ability to jump around in the stack and use the debug window in context. But the experience of editing code in the debug window is much inferior to IPython. It should be a regular editor and Tab should just insert a Tab, if I select something from the file I should be able to send it to the debug editor. It even handicaps the use of arrows, you need to do Shift+Up and Shift+Down if you have more than one line. Also, the debugger is slow, especially when showing a Pandas dataframe. I can still invoke IPython embed from the debug window.
You should really give Pycharm (free community edition works just fine) a shot. It has a bit of a steep learning curve getting set up, but it is everything you want both from an IDE and seamless integration with an IPython shell (you can toggle a setting to make it use IPython shells if IPython is installed in the project venv)
We actually took some of the best of both world, interactivity via Jupyter and the IDE strength, make sure to check out this: https://ploomber.io/blog/vscode-pycharm/
