Ionic thrusters for drones? Maybe. Using light? No. Orders of magnitude off even considering the absolute limits of physics. That's not what this article says.

I didn’t see anything in the article that changes the amount of momentum that would be transferred - as far as I could tell it’s all about the distribution of that force being modulated to make the object being accelerated tend to stay in the center of the beam

Editing to clarify my point: the article’s title seems wildly misleading by using the word levitation. The energy required to “levitate” a macroscopic object in earth gravity using light is unchanged, and while I don’t feel like doing the math right now i feel pretty confident stating that “impractical” is a monstrous understatement.

Ionic thrusters only work well at very low pressures. At atmospheric pressure they are no better than a cold jet, just like opening a bottle of compressed air.