Even if someone has a skill capable of carrying out this type of welding, I cannot say that it would work.
There was, and I think there still is, a practice in the electronics industry, where products with certain flaws are used in places where these flaws do not affect operation.
It may be that the chip used in the ESP8266-01 has one or some defective GPIOS that are not used by the ESP8266-01, and that would not work if used in the ESP8266-E12.
But if you have skill in this type of welding, do you think it's worth trying?
After all, the price of an ESP8266-12F is not that high.