The M line was derived from the A line in the phones, and the individual cores are generally the same (though not in the same year). Counts, accelerators, other stuff on package/die is custom.

I think it was a fair question too. Even if things should be capable it was always possible the feature would be disabled in hardware or software somehow.

And with iPhones never running VMs as far as I know, we didn’t know if it was capable at all.

UTM seems to make VMs available on iOS (with App Store limitations) although I've only used it on Mac: https://docs.getutm.app/