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The RISC-V spec does allow non-trapping behavior and SeRV in particular has non-trapping behavior, which is an important part of how it can fit into 200 4-input LUTs.
https://github.com/olofk/serv#good-to-know
Of course you don't need an OS, but an OS is nice.
An OS is nice because you can have multiple real-time tasks with different priority levels, so that you can, for example, update the screen without worrying that it will screw up the PID control loop maintaining the iron's temperature.
The screen is nice because you can see what temperature the iron is set to and what temperature it's measuring. This makes it easier to set the temperature. Also IronOS lets you set the cutoff voltage so you don't kill your batteries by draining them down to zero, and it has an option to correct inaccurate temperature readings from the tip by calibrating the tip.
PID temperature control is nice, not only because the iron is ready for use much more quickly and weighs less, but also because it allows you to solder things to big copper pours without overheating your iron all the time, which means you burn components and lift traces a lot less often.
A 32-bit processor is nice because it means you can address the entire 128 KiB of Flash without shitty memory segmentation headaches when you're writing the firmware. Also you can use 32-bit math for everything instead of constantly worrying about overflow.
The GD32VF103 used in the Pinecil doesn't have memory protection, so IronOS https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS might not be the kind of operating system you're thinking it is. It doesn't have, for example, a filesystem, a command prompt, a GUI, a task list UI, or a networking stack.
But if you really need to, you can solder your circuits by heating up a chunk of brass in the flame of your gas stove, then pressing it to the circuit board before it cools off. I've done it. But I'd rather not.