I wonder if anyone has already posted this?
Considering the fact that AMD GPUs have been known to have higher power consumption when it comes to multimonitor usage, it doesn't surprise me at all that MBPs run hotter when connected to an external LCD.
Take this review from Anandtech:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11278/amd-radeon-rx-580-rx-570-review/2
It shows a 35% higher power consumption when you connect a display with mismatched resolution. Granted, in this case, it's a RX 580 but I guess this still applies to current Navi GPUs as well. It has been like this ever since I've been messing with PC hardware for the last 10 years.
I guess Apple is not the one to be blamed here, but AMD.
I'm also surprised that you are seriously debating about the impact of driving 4K resolutions and up. I mean, come on, you're talking about driving a static 2D image on overpowered 2019 hardware. Why should it even matter to these GPUs? I used to have a Surface Pro 2 with an i5 4200U that I had connected to two (!) 2560x1600 LCDs + the internal 1080p display which wasn't causing any heating up of the PC at all.
Even my ancient Lenovo X200 Tablet with a Core 2 Duo and integrated 4500MHD GPU was able to drive a 1440p display without a hiccup.
This seems not to be an issue at all on Nvidia and Intel GPUs. And I'm saying this as a kind of supporter of AMD GPUs due to their Linux driver support.