Something to consider is that while it's really hard to implement a decent NN-based algorithm like AlphaZero for your game, you get the benefit that model checkpoints give you a range of skill levels to play against as you train it.

Handicapping traditional tree search produces really terrible results, imo. It's common for weak chess engines to be weak for stupid reasons (they just hang pieces, make random unnatural moves, miss blatant threats etc). Playing weak versions of Leela chess really "feels" like a (bad) human opponent by contrast.

Maybe the juice isn't worth the squeeze. It's definitely a ton of work to get right.