Got VNC working on my iPad following a combination of this tutorial:
And some extra info from here:
Works pretty well, actually perfect for Pico8 coding as you can use a keyboard paired with your iPad and the touch screen is used as a mouse, performance is totally fine for typing 
I’d consider this solved!
Note: I’m using the app Terminus for SSH + Linux command prompt access + transferring files to and from the Gameshell from the iPad: