Yes, you’ll need at least Artist to use the built-in MIDI Effects based on the VST-MA, however you might want to check on the developer forum as to whether or not that framework has any future – the Steinberg set of MIDI Effects got a facelift about 10 years ago and they haven’t been touched or updated in any way since then. On top of that, I’m not aware of any other DAW that can host a VST-MA plug-in.
As I understand it, VST3 is the way to go, which is already MIDI 2.0-aware, but I’m not a developer, beyond hobby dabbling.
The other thing is that Windows 11 is about to get a major update to the MIDI stack, which will enable things like system-native loopback ports, so it might be possible to route output from a Cubase MIDI track to an external application (that you develop, even in PowerShell) and then back into a different Cubase MIDI track for recording.