The bezel wouldn't have been as big. The resulting "fake bezel" is larger than necessary to house the camera, as it needs to shift where the camera is relative to the physical dimensions of the display and the border that it needs.

Just see literally any other laptop that has both a fairly small bezel and fits a webcam in it, like the Dell XPS 13. The camera in the macbook may be better and require a larger lens assembly as a result, but it's surely not as big as the bezel + notch itself requires.