I don't know how serious your project is and how much reliability and predictability you need; but regarding
I would need a 2-300ohm resistor in series to protect the microcontroller
I will just say: I have yet to kill an AVR.
I haven't used any gate drivers yet, but I remember an introductory video about MOSFET control that helped me a lot, and at about 7:40 he shows his go-to setup.
And again, I don't know your requirements, but my default logic level MOSFET is the SI2302. It's available from a bunch of different manufacturers, has a threshold voltage less than 1V and can conduct several amps continuously.
