We've investigated the cause of this slowdown, and there is a small difference in font rendering time showing in Play Mode in the Editor. This particular difference does not appear to get worse with larger projects, so in a project running at 30fps (rather than 700fps) the <1ms time will make little difference.
However, I see that there was another Discussions thread this originally linked to that was not related to playmode performance. I've replied there and am attempting to get the reproduction project for that. Will open a new bug for that if/when I get it and link it to this one.
(Have marker this as "Won't Fix", but could also have been "As Designed" since UI was deliberately changed in between these versions.)