I got my letters from a very close research mentor and a supervisor from work and gave them a thank you card and a cholocate, nothing fancy 🙂
In terms of personal vs template, I think it certainly depends on profs ... I used to work at a career services at my school few years ago so been exposed to letter of recs of other students (of course confidental, students don't have access to them unless the letter writer shows the letter personally to them) The career service would "keep" the letters and send them to places upon request from students. It was a nice system because profs don't need to worry about writting multiple letters to one student and students don't need to worry about asking the letters multiple times, etc!
I've seen/heard of few very generate "template" general letter but I think that was because the prof didn't know the student very well. In most cases as long as the professor knows you then (assuming the prof is nice and/or not lazy...) I think the letters are personal although the quality and content cannot be guarenteed ..... haha
Hope this helps 🙂