Workspace being froze or causing issue, is just the symptom of the actual problem. It's not the workspace are the problem. So, maybe you should investigate the underlying issue.
Which version of Gnome are you using? Older version of Gnome had an issue with workspace switch, which has been fixed over a year ago.
You do realize, Surface Pro 3 is a 10 year old laptop, which only have 4GB of RAM, and iGPU, and I have opened up 14 workspace, with multiple applications. And, obviously it had some lag, but it never became unusable.
Which version of Gnome are you using? Older version of Gnome had an issue with workspace switch, which has been fixed over a year ago.
You do realize, Surface Pro 3 is a 10 year old laptop, which only have 4GB of RAM, and iGPU, and I have opened up 14 workspace, with multiple applications. And, obviously it had some lag, but it never became unusable.