An electric circuit is anything in which electric current flows. Typically it refers to things with wiring like the electronics in your phone, but it can be made of anything that conducts electricity.
Say you have a battery, it basically has a bunch of electrons under a potential (think of gas in a tank under pressure), but the only way for the electrons to move is to move through a conductor, which are molecules with loosely held electrons. If you take a copper wire and touch each end to the two terminals you’ve completed an electric circuit because the electrons can now flow. But you can also put things partway through the wire like a lightbulb, which when the electrons run through it generates light.