I use Ubuntu for all my home lab servers unless there's a specific requirement for something else.
I never install the desktop version except when experimenting, and in those cases, I'd be just as happy using any other distro, since those use cases are fairly limited both in scope and duration.
Ubuntu is just the os I put on virtual servers.
Judge me if you want. I really could not possibly care less. I also use Windows on my daily driver desktop.
I'm considering going canonical MAAS for a new deployment of open stack servers which will be replacing my current hypervisors (which are VMware), pushing Ubuntu and OpenStack onto systems for use and probably also using MAAS to roll out future virtual machines in OpenStack.
Were you able to run headless without installing snapd? I tried and tried, but there was some shared library dependency that always led to me having snapd installed, and after fighting with it repeatedly I found it easier to switch to Debian.
It's really disappointing that snapd has even infected headless installs. I loved Ubuntu on headless, and I still use it as a docker base image.
I honestly don't pay that much attention to what packages are installed. As long as system loads are acceptable when nothing is running, leaving sufficient resources for whatever needs doing.