Can somebody help me out with this question: The default config for unattended-upgrades seems to not enable reboot even if a reboot would be required to activate the upgrades.
Wouldn't that had made quite a few important upgrades in the last years effectless if they server did never get rebooted?
Not sure if this is still true, but I've also seen cases where Ubuntu will happily continue to install kernel updates as they come down the pipe, right up until /boot is full of old kernels and ramdisks.
Yes. You should still keep your eye out on patches. If a big vulnerability gets patched requiring a reboot, you'll want to attend to the upgrades yourself.