You're much better off getting an older TZ/TZe P-touch with a USB port from before the more recent enshittification. CUPS supports them well and there are utilities that can print images direct to them.
If you are serious about printing labels and can program you should get yourself a Zebra label printer or Intermec/Honeywell one that has ZPL emulation (these tend to be cheaper than Zebra, so near the pricing of Brother consumer stuff, but more fiddly with media alignment). ZPL is this super weird language, but after few hours you will be printing any labels you want without dealing with CUPS or its filter chains. Totally indispensable tool when you do that is https://labelary.com/viewer.html (the fonts there are somewhat off from what the real hardware does, but the sizing more or less matches)
Edit: another thing that you get with Zebra/Honeywell is that these printers do not use proprietary media and transfer ribbons (if you go with TTR model, which I would recommend) and you can source the consumables anywhere you want as long as it will mechanically fit. We even use Zebra printer with Epson-branded continuous DT uncut label media to print a beer tap-list. Along that path we even found what can be hardware bug in the printer: apparently you cannot get the print head to overheat, as the power supply will go into thermal shutdown well before that, but in all fairness the thing was not designed to print half a meter long mostly black “labels”.
The Zebra LP2844 is a workhorse 4x6 label printer.
Zebra took the design and sells it as the "all new" ZP888 in China and other foreign markets at stupidly low costs. There are Alibaba sellers that will help you snag one back into the US for around $150-200 instead of the massive cost of Zebra's US products ;)
Zebra printers only print on the surface and have the usual limitations of thermal printers. P-touch TZ uses thermal transfer which enables a variety of foreground and background colors, different cover laminates, ribbons, and heatshrink tubing. The laminated tapes are printed on the back of the lamination ensuring the image can't be removed and is immune to subsequent heat or fading with age.
