when applying a sql server cumulative update or service pack on a virtual machine - what could be a safe way of stopping VMWaretools?
None of the services in your screenshot have anything to do with VMWare.

The one you highlighted is Wmiprvse.exe which is basically WMI


  WMI resides in a shared service host with several other services. To avoid stopping all the services when a provider fails, providers are loaded into a separate host process named "Wmiprvse.exe". 


The other ones are 


SSISTELEMETRY is basically the customer improvement service
Windows Agent Service is probably something for NetIQ.
PBIEgwService is an on-prem Power BI gateway.


In any case, just update the box and reboot it afterwards (I'm assuming you have a maintenance window for the update anyway), I'm fairly sure you can stop those 4 services during the update.