I guess it depends on your philosophical position on 'simulations'. If you believe simulations "aren't the real thing", then a simulation of chemistry "isn't actual chemistry", and thus a simulation of life "isn't actual life." Anyways, the definition I gave doesn't explicitly make any distinction here.

About exotic forms of life, it could be possible. A while ago I had some thoughts about life based on quark-gluon interactions inside a neutron star. Since neutron star matter is incredibly compact and quarks interact on timescales much faster than typical chemistry, you could have beings of human-level complexity existing in a space of less than a cubic micrometer and living out a human-lifespan-equivalent existence in a fraction of a second.

But these types of life are really really speculative at this point. We have no idea that they could exist, and pretty strong reasons for thinking they couldn't. It doesn't seem worth it to stretch a definition of life to contain types of life we can't even fathom yet.