Console via network socket?

I've been running an ESP8266 on a Pico to control a servo (venetian blind tilt), using HTTP. However, I'm switching to a TCP socket instead to control via nc, so that I can do immediate variable control from a remote rotary encoder rather than the slow open-request-response-close HTTP method.

That seems to be working, but I was wondering if it was possible to effectively do socket.setConsole(); I know it's not that straightforward, as it would be if it were acting as a serial port, but is there some way of passing incoming data from socket.on('data', function () { /* pass to console */ })? It'd be nice to just send servo.set(...) commands via nc rather than making up a new protocol.

Incidentally, I was having trouble running the HTTP server and the TCP socket server running at the same time, even though from what I can see AT+CIPMUX=1 is set. Code:

   var ESP8266 = require("ESP8266WiFi_0v25");
   var Net = require('net');
   var HTTP = require('http');
   // ...

   wifi.connect(..., ..., function (err) {
        // ...
        http = HTTP.createServer(onRequest);
        http.listen(80);

        ssock = Net.createServer(onConnect);
        ssock.listen(3000);
   });

Error is:

   >Uncaught Error: CIPSERVER failed (no change)
    at line 2 col 20
   (a?a:"Timeout")+")");}

If either the http pair or the ssock pair are commented, no problem. Before I spend too much time fiddling, has anyone managed to do two separate servers at the same time, or is this a known limitation?

Thanks, as ever :)