What is the proepr way to use drupal_view_result()?

but even when the View is empty, it contains empty HTML elements

That's a known issue in Drupal theming system.

So, is my code snippet the recommended way to do it?

To save rending the View twice, I thought that something like this would be possible:

{% set view_content = drupal_view_result('related', 'block_1') %}
{% if view_content is not empty %}
  <section>
    {{ view_content }}
  </section>
{% endif %}

It looks good. If the problem is only about rendering empty HTML markup you can also consider using CSS has selector to hide it.

Thanks. I would rather it not be on the page at all.

I'd like to switch this to a feature request: Add a function which returns a printable value if there are results in the View and otherwise returns NULL. That would allow the new function to be used in place of drupal_view_result() in code like in #3.

Actually #3 is wrong. The snippet in issue summary looks correct.
As of feature request I don't think it worth implementing. It looks more clear when checking for emptiness expensively. Function like drupal_view_if_not_empty() would look wierd.

I know the code in #3 would not work. I wrote that as an example of what I would like to be able to do in order to avoid executing the View twice.

I think being more efficient is more important than not looking weird.