I"m not entirely certain what I'm trying to do is doable. I want a ready made website that I can make live fairly quick but later modify it with python code. I have basic python knowledge and used it, as well as SQL regularly as a BSA at a past job. I also have some experience with HTML, though I would need a heavy brush up to actually build a website. We focused more on flash at the time. (15 years ago or so). I want a basic templated website that I can make live with very little customization and gradually learn and modify it with python. If I'm understanding correctly, you can't run python in html, but you can run html in Django. I read about Django Templates but not entirely certain this will be ready to go without some serious python webbev knowledge. Is it possible to have Django framework run an html templated website? Or are Django templated websites easy to customize and make live?
It sounds like you're missing a fundamental understanding of frontend and backend and how they interact. What you're referring to with "running HTML in Django" is called SST - Server Side Templating. You can write a template using HTML plus some markdown that Django understands (e.g. to inject variables/data from backend), and Django will render that template on the backend and serve it as an HTML document (i.e. a web page).
Django can be a bit heavyweight for beginners, I would recommend looking at Flask as it is much simpler to get started - you can have a Flask application up and running in less than 10 minutes. You can find the Flask quickstart guide here - the minimal "Hello World" application is only 5 lines of code.