Maybe a bit more detail. However your VPs provider has the IP address in the Dashboard with server specs.
How easy this is will depend on the SMTP you choose to use. For example Brevo.com it is just sign up a username and password and either use the free or paid plans.
Then just entering the username, password in discourse setup and the SMTP address
The above is standard in discourse. The smpt provider may also have instructions to create a DNS record if I have it correct to have the dkim to help ensure mail delivery.
Then you have some like Lark which is more complicated setup then what I posted above.
This is why Discourse Meta is here to help provide official and community based support. If one has a budget there are many folks that will do the initial setup and some like @pfaffman for self hosted folks has a support dashboard for a small yearly fee that also includes his support. The Dashboard gives options to make installing plugins and doing some command line upkeep for less techy savvy users.
Just to be clear I do sympathize with where your coming from and have to say. In this day and age a gui UX is considered more standardized for every day layman users.