Linux containers (OCI Containers) are ephemeral by design, except the volumes, you mount into them. In large scale environments, that can be useful (cattle vs pets argument). But that also introduces new challenges and makes it more complex to manage them.
For my personal environments, I like the approach of FreeBSD jails more. They are just a directory (or ZFS Dataset) with their own, persistent copy of the OS, easy to manage and the networking capabilities are flexible (bridged, vnet, they can be routed, firewalled, etc).
Jails are well aged, are around since FreeBSD 4 back in 2000, the non-ephemeral approach (and the absence of overlay file systems etc) makes them more feel like individual virtual servers than modern Linux containers but with extreme levels of flexibility.
Tools like jmore(8) (by @vermaden) and Bastille (Jails “Templates”) makes them even easier to manage.