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Every browser on iOS is essentially safari but reskinned. Apple forces browser apps to be WebKit based. That means supporting other codecs, and different types of web technologies, etc, only happens on iOS when WebKit supports it, because all browsers have to use the WebKit that’s provided by apple.

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Is firefox WebKit based? Does it have the same drawbacks/exposures?

On iOS, yes. My understanding is that Apple forbids installing full Safari alternatives on iOS. On iOS the only permitted browsers are Safari reskins that use the Safari webkit. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS

If I'm misinformed please let me know.

This greatly impacts ALL web development. Many people use iOS, and Apple prevents the installation of real alternative browsers. As a result, it's typically financial suicide for any web developer to use a client-side feature not currently supported by iOS Safari.

There is one partial exception: Puffin. It uses Chrome on Linux and a custom lightweight remote desktop-like client to let the server render the pages and the phone view them.

It's an impressive work around, though it adds it's own problems, not the least of which putting a lot of trust in a third party.

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