Good morning @wb-we,
Well, I got to the point where the printers I wanted are working (not necessarily the way I would like them to, but they do). A combination of CUPS shares and drivers preinstalled on client machines was a solution in my scenario. I’m lucky as we don’t allow BYOD and all clients are domain joined so no authentication or accounting is required.
Had a quick look at CUPS and passwords and here are some interesting finds which might be a solution for you. I could not verify them as my CUPS configuration doesn’t have user auth enabled:
- printing - How can I use CUPS' basic authentication from a windows client? - Super User
- Configuring CUPS to password protect IPP shared printers with windows compatibilty - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange
@scheinig
I feel the CUPS faff could affect how some users see UCS in general. Printing is important on a network with central management so it should either work or not be mentioned at all. After a week spent trying to make the printers to work, I’d rather not have seen the app available in UCS software centre 
(In general others don’t mention printing or CUPS at all, look at Zentyal or Nethserver)
Best of luck