Yes, it uses memory, Michael. If you take a look at your running applications, you will see that the TTS is tied to your running service.
If you choose to release the TTS when not needed, you'll be facing this problem : on some devices, you won't get the TTS finish information correctly so you could release it before it has finished to speak. But there is a code that Erel posted (somewhere on the forum) which will allow you to test if the TTS has really finished speaking.