I know it is possible to do a restore of a user's mailbox. But does anyone have a really simple way of doing this? Like an Exchange console command or something?
Also, if I understood this correctly, the restore is put in a restore container of some sort? How easy is it to restore that content into the actual mailbox I'm trying to recover?
It almost sounds like you're asking two different things here.
Restoring a mailbox requires a backup, and the directions differ wildly based on what backup product you use.
Individual deleted items can be recovered as long as you have Deleted Items Retention set. They can be recovered through Outlook. Anything past the Deleted Items Retention will require a backup to restore from.
Looking at it again, calendar and contacts are treated a little differently and my experience has been that those need to be recovered from a backup as well.