With 0 extensions it absolutely doesn’t take 1GB and the more extensions you add it resembles more an IDE than a text editor, so the 1GB is completely justified. In fact, I have tons of extensions and mine takes around 300MB, I have like 5 instances open for work reasons (several remote connections) running on a VDI that gives me like 4 GB of RAM, and I can open excel, teams, and all the other company bullshit, alongside a browser with 20 tabs open. So no, it doesn’t take 1GB per instance.
I usually update every week but sometimes it took me a month, that was more than 700 updates easily. No hitches, everything was fine after reboot. I wonder what kind of hellish package structure you have installed.