Do you accept that the questions are qualitatively different?

I think the first phrasing is asking you to directly use the definition:

  f'(x) = \lim_{h\to 0}{{f(x+h) - f(x)} \over h}

And the second phrasing is asking for the application of some more mechanical rules (e.g. the derivative of a constant/power/scaling or the product rule) or for sympy to apply them.

FWIW, this is also not what I would expect ‘University-level mathematics’ to mean. The second meaning fits into high school, at least where I grew up. I was expecting proofs to be honest.