Maybe not Kubernetes, but what about Docker Compose or Docker Swarm? Having each app be separate from the rest of the server, with easily controllable storage, networking, resource limits, restarts, healthchecks, configuration and other things. It's honestly a step up from well crafted cgroups and systemd services etc. (also because it comes in a coherent package and a unified description of environments) while the caveats and shortcomings usually aren't great enough to be dealbreakers.

But yeah, the argument could have as well just said running code on a VPS directly, because that also gives you a good deal of control.