First, thanks for working on Pharo, what an amazing environment.
I am not a lawyer so you should double check.
For GPL, indeed the image as a whole would be GPL. If the personal project is more of an “executable”, it might be what you are looking for, any further image modification would have to be released under the GPL as well.
If the project is more of a “library”, you might or might not prefer the LGPL. In this case I feel like https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-java.en.html would apply similarly to Java. As long as you can load the image and change the original library code, other code is not restricted on the license.
Maybe look into PipeWire, Reaper in jack mode works fine connected to PipeWire for me, without any of the problems you mentioned.
It is quite possible that your desktop audio already uses PipeWire depending on your distribution, you would need to look at latency settings if you want live playback.