At CircuitHub we use NixOS on embedded devices, x86 though. I know of a few other commercial embedded users. Works great.
I think if more devices aren't doing this kind of thing then the cost might not make sense to them at all. Perhaps they aren't bricking devices often, or perhaps their support load is low.
But I'm only speculating. I'm all for more NixOS if it helps people.
Fedora-IoT effectively does this with rpm-ostree + greenboot.
Greenboot specifies a series of directories under /etc that organizes your custom scripts (scripts that must not fail, scripts that may fail, scripts to run on success, scripts to run after previous failed, etc) then it marks your current ostree as either being active or auto-rollsback into previous.