Many smaller PHP web sites are deployed on VPSes and managed with CPanel or Plesk control panels. None of what you describe is necessary. The web server is pre-configured and PHP settings can be easily changed. Even setting up PHP on Ubuntu or CentOS is a 5 minute job. Tweaking configuration settings for max upload, max post size, etc. are very common and well understood.
Once everything is in place, most deployments are as simple as copying the new build over and changing a symlink. No process restarts, nothing.
"Easy to deploy" and "Many cheap webhosts are already configured for it" are still very different things. I never found it helpful to conflate them. For example, a VPS with CPanel/Plesk is quite the dependency. As is "a cheap PHP webhost with servers configured for your PHP scripts".
I look at it this way: PHP apps are so easy to deploy, it's a commodity. I run my own dev servers then move them to VPSes, billed to the client, for deployment.
Once everything is in place, most deployments are as simple as copying the new build over and changing a symlink. No process restarts, nothing.