The fact that we use whitespace for layout is precisely why it's a bad idea to assign it semantic value. I'm a fan of both braces and semicolons for that reason.
When you're starting out, the best form to express to other humans is probably the one you're expressing to the computer. This isn't literally true—I don't think beginners should write in assembly—but it's true enough that they probably shouldn't mess with indentation beyond what would naively follow from bracket placement.
My supposition here is that the threshold of skill needed to understand the form/function distinction here is significantly lower than you expect it to be. In written natural language, people don't typically attach semantic meaning to things like indententation, kerning, letter spacing, text alignment, font size, etc., and usually distinguish style from semantics intuitively without having to apply any conscious decision rules. Distinguishing form from content is something we do by nature.
I'd expect that at least those already familiar with natural writing in most modern languages will have a bias toward expecting that whitespace does not have semantic value, while punctuation marks do. Conversely, I'd expect recognizing cases where indentation does control logic flow to be what requires a higher skill level.
That said, my preference is curly braces (or whatever) because I’ve found indentation is often a bother. Yes, most of the time you use indentation together with braces, but not every time. There are many occasions where code is clearer without (or with custom) indentation. Furthermore, indentation-based parsing makes experimentation and finding issues more difficult. Sometimes you need to extract a small part of a larger block to bung in a REPL or something and now you’re fighting with stupid errors because of formatting, adding to the frustration.
Regarding intuitiveness, for beginners I have some doubts it makes much of a difference, and if it does I also doubt indentation wins. If you know how to write (which is a prerequisite), you know what parenthesis and quotation marks are, you understand they encapsulate something separate from the rest. Indentation is a different concept.
That said, my preference is to use the tools built into my editor and available on the CLI or web to assist and fix formatting and syntax. You get instant feedback on incorrect formatting, and I generally find that synthetic scope mistakes (regardless of method) are eliminated.