This kind of reminds of the BlackDog: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackDog
It was a small computer that easily fit in a pocket and only had a single USB port. That was connected to a computer which powered it, and it connected as a virtual CD-ROM drive.
On that was an xming X11 server. The BlackDog ran your applications outputted through it. The applications it ran could also access the Internet through the host computer.
I'm also using it to script sessions of workflows with many programs, for instance a dev environment with a lot of microservices. Some windows with multiple panes each.