I would take either Rails or Node for your problem.
Rails is a great framework: super complete in regards of testing frameworks, authentication libraries, great community support.... but I would say that the latest versions are a bit of a mess for newcomers, because of the way they manage assets: if the assets are served by the framework(Assets Pipeline) vs using Webpack .
If you are already familiar with React, Node is another great framework that will require a bit more effort on selecting the dependencies but for your use case seems a great candidate.
In regards of what you are commenting about learning during the process, both can be Dockerized pretty easy and you can spend some time digging on the lifecycle of putting it into production. Rails has a ridiculous easy way of deploying with Heroku avoiding any kind of work, but if you want to get your hands dirty you can deploy either of the frameworks on a Dockerized environment to any cloud provider you like. That part is really interesting too, and if you are interested on the Devops side, I would say that Node is a bit easier and more convenient(smaller image sizes and times to build) than Rails. All in all:
Rails pros: stable framework, great community support, great testing utilities. Rails cons: How they manage the assets lately(Assets Pipeline vs Webpack), dockerize the app.
Node pros: You are already familiar with Js, simple, easy to put in prod allowing to spend time in the Devops side. Node cons: Dependency management in Js environments is a pain in the ass