If you want to use NTS, but can’t get an IP cert, then you are left requiring DNS before you can get a trusted time. If DNS is down- then you can’t get the time. A common issue with DNSSEC is having the wrong time- causing validation failures. If you have DNSSEC enforced and have the wrong time- but NTS depends on DNS, then you are out of luck with no way to recover. Having IP as part of your cert allows trusted time without the DNS requirement, which can then fix your broken DNSSEC enforcement.
Essentially: keep some minimum values for time. Then do a single HTTPS request, ignore the validation of the certificate's date to start with, but use the Date header to later validate it against minimum / maximum. This has the advantage it's still a HTTPS request, so can't be MiTM'd and depending on implementation it can validate the time quite well (even if the device has run out of power it can have saved a recent timestamp on disk, so with regular use of the device an old certificate won't be valid, keeping the main useful property of certificates having validity periods).
I don't believe it does this, but you could do this without DNS as 8.8.8.8, etc already have IP address certificates:
curl -sI https://1.1.1.1 | grep -i '^date:'
curl -sI https://8.8.8.8 | grep -i '^date:'
curl -sI https://9.9.9.9 | grep -i '^date:'
It would need a custom tool though, as curl only has --insecure, not a way to avoid just the notBefore / notAfter validation of the cert.(This is not the only thing to use this technique, OpenBSD's ntpd has a way to contrain time based on HTTP headers: https://man.openbsd.org/ntpd.conf#CONSTRAINTS -- the default ntpd.conf ships with Quad9 configured via IP address.)