My understanding (unless they’ve changed it) was that a restart is a restart because software (either the OS or 3rd party software or both) may need the computer restarted to finish installing or updating stuff.
I’d heard that a shutdown wasn’t actually a shutdown, though.
For me, it’s not that Windows updates my drivers during a big update. It’s simply that Windows broke the driver while installing a big update.
I’ve had it happen where my Wi-Fi driver broke so it could only connect to an unprotected network. So I’d simply setup my phone as a hotspot and download the Wi-Fi driver from the manufacturer’s website and reinstall it. That’d immediately fix the issue. Though, actually, that issue hasn’t occured in years. The last time it happened, I think, was in the early years of Windows 10.