Yeah, I like the idea of that stuff, and org-babel too, actually. But the setup just seems like a bit of a bear. I use spacemacs, and the python layer for that[1] can spawn a repl and send code, but in order to do so incrementally, I have to manually select the code to send to the repl. The great thing about the cell construction in jupyter is that it supplies a natural way to organize chunks of code, you don't have to define the chunks of code before executing them.
Maybe you should try ob-ipython. It'll spawn a Jupyter server with a python kernel, and send your source blocks as cells, and you also get to keep all the other org goodies.
That being said, it's still pretty sweet!
[1] https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/master/layers/%2B...