I recently integrated mini_httpd (a small forking server) into an embedded system as part of a solution for distributing updates across a cluster of these systems.
You must be talking about 15 cent microcontrollers (that still have a TCP/IP stack with SSL) or something, not ARM cores with MMU's running Linux.
As I said, if you can fork all the time you probably shouldn't be using a memory-unsafe language anyway. Nothing you've said so far has suggested otherwise. The basic techniques for implementing your own memory safety are still valuable and worth discussing for people who aren't in Easy Mode all the time.
With regard to the other point, if we are using a memory-safe language, then we can use fork to get an instant arena, regardless of how that language performs resource management under the hood. Whatever allocations happen in the request, of memory or file descriptors, are reliably gone when that exits. If there is any problem in the implementation of the memory safety, the failure is contained to a process. Thus we have an additional reason to use process containment: not having control over the memory management, and not trusting it 100%.