It’s all about conservation of energy.

In your satellite scenario, the sum of kinetic and potential energy must remain fixed. This means higher orbits are slower orbits. In fact this is observable in man-made satellites that are moved to higher or lower orbits. There is no free ride.

In the “heat death” of the universe scenario, the total amount of energy in the universe is conserved (it is finite) but the volume of the universe keeps growing. On a long enough time scale the universe’s average energy per unit volume approaches zero.