I like the areas of Solstice without enemies and just nice sand dunes. It's peaceful.
It doesn't make sense to me to call it lacking content or lazy, as they could have very easily just added a pack of enemies to these quiet spots, or made the landmass smaller but denser with enemies. It's the same implementation as Blackwood or Cyrodiil, but I find it nicer in Solstice.
It could always benefit from some details like ruins, campsites, interesting plant arrangements, or a discoverable hangout area (like a picnic in the wilds). But ultimately, I just happen to like it.
As far as the intrigue, I think it would be nice if the stories focused a bit more on relationships between the current argonians and altmer. But, there's still much, much more nuance to the zone and lore and history than the basegame zones I'm playing through (doing EP now), so I would say this is an area that's better some years than others. I really liked reading about Solstice's history and seeing it play out in some of the sidequests. But the main quest was the least interesting part--definitely a trend for certain zones.
Nobody outside of ZOS knows the full details on how to unlock gifting. And there has been a recent incident where a player with seemingly good intentions got gifting unlocked for them, but they had many red flags which caused them to be permabanned both in-game and the forums within 24 hours.
Can't you purchase the Crowns for your wife's ESO account though?