OS is xubuntu 24.04

Ubuntu defaults to ufw. That, by itself, justifies the use of ufw in your case.

if you use docker, docker ignores ufw rules

I use UFW personally but firewalld professionally. UFW ships with Debian based and firewalld with RHEL.

If suppose I might like UFW’s syntax a bit more.

The documentation is there for everyone to see. You can easily figure out what it takes to accomplish your task with both. Honestly though, why not just try it for yourself and come to your own conclusion. If you’re on Ubuntu, UFW is probably already installed.

How often are you going to be managing ports?

Just use any tool you like, all they do is fiddle with the Kernel’s filter table.

Network Filter Tables (NFT) is the current system. https://wiki.nftables.org/wiki-nftables/index.php/Main_Page

I like firewalld. Its also used on many enterprise distros (RHEL, SLES).

But if you just have to open one port for something, just use what’s installed on your distro.