you could theoretically struggle to write C code to work like Erlang
Lots of people write non-blocking network servers in C (epoll, kqueue, etc -- libevent); that does not constitute "struggling to write C code that works like Erlang", but it still delivers a very high-performance end result.
C performs well, but can be unstable
C is perfectly "stable", it can just be hard to get right.
Where Erlang is really strong is that you can handle fairly long running processes that won't block other stuff that's happening. Of course you can find ways to do that in C, but it's just easier and way cleaner in Erlang. This works because of Erlang's internal scheduler.
Lots of people write non-blocking network servers in C (epoll, kqueue, etc -- libevent); that does not constitute "struggling to write C code that works like Erlang", but it still delivers a very high-performance end result.
C performs well, but can be unstable
C is perfectly "stable", it can just be hard to get right.