Ah fun! I had a period in my life where for some reason I attracted 3 different people within 2 months which were all missing their permanent lateral incisors.

It was really interesting to see, for one person nothing was done whatsoever, she just has 4 smallish gaps (and just generally a bit wonky teeth). For one person, the gap was closed by moving the other teeth closer with braces. She also doesn't really have many problems. The only one with consistent problems is the one where they moved the teeth apart to install implants. Just constant problems with infection, pain, broken implants etc etc.

So just from that anecdote it seemed like in this case implants only cause issues.