Group inboxes and archives are visible even when empty

That definitely sounds like a bug. If set to nobody the group mailbox imho should not be visible.

I imagine a workaround fix could be to use the #theme-component to add groups as classes and then use each group class to display none on group mailboxes that are set to nobody. I say to use group classes as I imagine if you use CSS to hide them in general it might also hide the moderators group mail box.