In my opinion, PHP edged out Perl for a similar reason, in mod_php. mod_perl you had to write thought-out classes for, configured the server, etc, where mod_php you just uploaded the .php files and got (comparatively) blazing fast performance that Perl CGI couldn't match.
The only reason PHP edged out Perl is that one could mix-match HTML and PHP in the same page. Which is ironic when professional PHP tries so hard today to look like JEE.
Exactly. You could as well use a load balancer to proxy incoming requests to your own pool of backend "functions"/processes each linked to eg. nghttp2. Would have the benefit that your "functions" can be executed independently, or from the command line, like CGIs.
