There is a small spike with the metric server around the issue period, I see:
vertical-pod-autoscaler-vpa-admission-controller-55f76b5b4x9ptc - 32 MB, 0.1 CPU cores
I do see a spike in received KBps for this pod during the problem period:
vertical-pod-autoscaler-vpa-recommender-7fc4fc986f-lvdwr - 47 MB, 0.1 CPU cores
Also has KBps spike:
vertical-pod-autoscaler-vpa-updater-ccff6b445-kgrqr - 34.6 MB, 0.1 CPU cores
overall VPA resource profile during issue period:
Metric Server - 23.97 MB, 0.00372 CPU cores
So total rounded up would be 32 + 47 + 35 + 24 = 138 MB RAM, pretty negligible CPU usage from what I can see. Will look into it more and double-check to see if anything else stands out.