Could you run a test:
- remove the widget from parent once, do not Collect Garbage
- keep ticking Get All Widgets
- get a cookie, wait 70 seconds
What do you get?
Almost certainly irrelevant, but perhaps you could shed some light on this part:
Did you mean to set anchors of the canvas slot instead? As in:
This widget is not in the viewport anyway.
When I reproduce
What I meant was how do we reproduce it. Because, as you probably know, under regular circumstances, removing a widget from its parent works pretty consistently. What is irregular here, what’s special about this setup?
Also, most importantly:
the Widget doesn’t remove
Do you mean it does not get released from memory or it does not disappear from the screen? If it’s about memory release - automatic Garbage Collection is scheduled to happen much later, you just need to wait. It’s designed not to stress the system with frequent updates - calling it manually produces the opposite effect as @dZh0 mentioned.