Those are indeed ads.
I believe the business pays per click. I’ve seen (edit) only one estimate for the cost, claiming $2 to $6 per click. (https://www.shopify.com/retail/google-maps-ads)
(I previously had mentioned a second estimate but that was for regular ads)
We don’t know how much she pays, but yeah. It’s quite likely she does pay that much (and it may or may not pay off - if she gets one extra long term customer paying $100 per session, every week, for a year, that easily pays for a couple hundred clicks that go nowhere. OTOH the 99% of people who don’t need a LSCW but click the pin just to figure out what it is, why it shows up on the map, or what the acronym stands for aren’t going to provide any benefit…).
Ads/Marketing/customer acquisition are unbelievably expensive (and thus also a huge business).