Visual novel with Unity : best UI solution ?

Hello forum,

I'm designing a game which will have similarities with a visual novel (or old-style adventure game) : I need several screens corresponding to places, each with its own set of buttons and interactive elements, e.g. :
- the bar with buttons "drink", "chat" or "play cards",
- the beach with buttons "sunbath" or "swim", etc.

What is the best solution to code the UI to do that? I've thought of 2 solutions:
- create different scenes each corresponding to one place. But I'll have to carry around a bunch of "DontDestroyOnLoad" things that belong to the game's main code.
- call everything procedurally in the UI (change background sprite, instantiate buttons etc.) - the coder's choice, but then the neat graphic interface of Unity can't be used to design things.

Does someone have experience with that, or have good ideas to do it the right way?