My suggestion is to look to hire a partner especially in Salesforce to get you up and running asap. There is a ton to learn and specialize in with Salesforce and to try to set up a new instance without any history can be a daunting task and on top of that Hubspot works completely different in that the objects don’t necessarily equate to one another (ie: Hubspot Contacts --> Salesforce Leads & Salesforce Contacts, Hubspot Campaigns vs. Salesforce Campaigns, etc.).
I can’t really say whether or not to use Lead Status as it depends on the goals of your reporting and what you are trying to setup and maintain. In some instances you can use them, but in other instances, the ask may be too complex to utilize the standard, out-of-the-box fields. In the basic instances tracking Lead Status to conversion is enough, but in some more complex cases it is not enough so a custom field is created in Salesforce on the Lead Object that can be mapped to the Contact Object. I would recommend posting this over in the trailblazer community as you are likely to get more technical answers there about Salesforce setup as opposed to within Hubspot which also competes in the space.