The main thing that gives me anxiety about this is the security surface area associated with "managing" a whole OS— kernel, userland, all of it. Like did I get the firewall configured correctly, am I staying on top of the latest CVEs, etc.
For that reason alone I'd be tempted to do GHA workflow -> build container image and push to private registry -> trivial k8s config that deploys that container with the proper ports exposed.
Run that on someone else's managed k8s setup (or Talos if I'm self hosting) and it's basically exactly as easy as having done it on my own VM but this way I'm only responsible for my application and its interface.
For that reason alone I'd be tempted to do GHA workflow -> build container image and push to private registry -> trivial k8s config that deploys that container with the proper ports exposed.
Run that on someone else's managed k8s setup (or Talos if I'm self hosting) and it's basically exactly as easy as having done it on my own VM but this way I'm only responsible for my application and its interface.