I was wondering if it is possible to expose an http endpoint to display that status back to an end user

Yes, it is

and how one would go about doing that?

Personally I would just create a Web API project with background (hosted) service which will do actual work and the status endpoint and host it as a Windows service.

ASP.NET Core is basically a console app with extra dependencies (it comes with build-in Kestrel web server) so it can easily hosted as a Windows service.