You'll be fine
As the DM, you retain full control over the whole game world, including what spells are available and what they do. All you have to do is be honest and upfront with what rules you're changing before hand (and, if possible, why).
That's as easy as saying "Hey everyone. Before we get started, I'd just like to mention that Alex is interested in playing a darkness mage, so I've renamed Fireball to Voidball for Emomage the Wizard. It now engulfs an area with tongues of searing, dark flame. Everyone ok with that?"
This makes it clear that you're slightly tweaking the game and why. This should help clear up any confusion like "Why can't I find this spell in the book?".
The DMG has a few tidbits on changing spells. In particular, there's a section on page 283 called Creating a Spell. It offers some guidelines on damage, consistency with class themes (eg. no healing for Wizards), and tweaking the dice used. The closest it comes to a flavor change you're talking about is in the opening, where it says
When creating a new spell, use existing spells as guidelines.
Guidelines don't get much tighter than "mechanically indistinguishable".
There is some evidence of explicitly reflavoring a spell in the DMG as well. Take a look at page 41 in the Wuxia section.
... spells need only minor flavor changes so that they better reflect such a setting. For example, when the characters use spells or special abilities that teleport them short distances, they actually make high-flying acrobatic leaps. ... Flavorful descriptions of actions in the game don't change the nuts and bolts of the rules, but they make all the difference in the feel of a campaign.
The DMG is very clearly in support of the DM's ability to change this kind of detail to better support the campaign. The kind of change mentioned in the question, flames to dark-flames, is well in line with this kind of change.
The optional source book Tasha's Cauldron of Everything also features a section called Personalizing Spells on page 116, which explicitly supports cosmetic changes such as changing the color of a spell.
Just as every performer lends their art a personal flair and every warrior asserts their fighting styles through the lens of their own training, so too can a spellcaster use magic to express their individuality. Regardless of what type of spellcaster you’re playing, you can customize the cosmetic effects of your character’s spells. Perhaps you wish the effects of your caster’s spells to appear in their favorite color, to suggest the training they received from a celestial mentor, or to exhibit their connection to a season of the year. The possibilities for how you might cosmetically customize your character’s spells are endless. However, such alterations can’t change the effects of a spell. They also can’t make one spell seem like another—you can’t, for example, make a magic missile look like a fireball.
And it continues on page 117:
For example, the fireball of a wizard with a fondness for storms might erupt to look like burning clouds or a burst of red lighting (without affecting the spell's damage type), while the same wizard's haste spell might limn the target in faint thunderheads.
The sidebar notes that Tasha adds spectral chicken legs to her spells (in an effort to amuse her mother).
You may change your mind and decide you do want to change some mechanics, such as the damage type. If you're worried about basically copying an existing spell, then you're probably overthinking it.
Sure, it's true that some damage types are more resisted than others across all monsters in the Monster Manual. Changing a Poison spell to Force can have a big impact in some games.
Fun fact: that's totally irrelevant.
You're running a one-shot, and creating the characters for it as well. This means you have a huge amount of knowledge and control over this situation. You know that if you're setting up the party to fight a bunch of Gnolls and Goblins, the damage type doesn't matter because they have no resistances/immunities/vulnerabilities. On the other hand, if you're setting them up to fight a few Devils, then most of the baddies are immune to Poison. Therefore changing a Poison spell to Force damage would have a large impact on that spell's effectiveness in your game. Fortunately, you know all this in advance and can make an informed decision on it.
So long as you don't change actual mechanics, such as the number of enemies targeted, the range, damage type, etc, any cosmetic change you make will be fine. Even small changes to spell mechanics are not likely to break anything.
A railroad can make a slot of stops along the way... at sandboxes
I agree with Timothy A Wiseman's answer about railroading and sandboxes being opposite ends of a spectrum. Turns out, I have players with strong preferences in both of those opposite directions, so to serve them as a group, I need a mix of both.
The basic pattern: intersperse sandbox and railroad segments
Every quest starts and ends with a railroaded event. We will start with event A and end with event Z. But in between there are several sandboxes - places to just play around for awhile. This takes more up-front work on the part of the GM. You essentially need to plant several nuggets in each sandbox for them to find, such that by spending enough time in that sandbox, and going down variant pathways, they will inevitably get to the next "railroad" stop.
An example
For example, at one mid-point in a quest, I have them needing to rescue a kidnappee but they have no idea where. They find out someone else is already tracking the kidnappers, so they could track the trackers. But around the same time, an NPC reports the kidnappers were last seen in a certain locale -- so now there are two ways to go. Meanwhile, questioning villagers reveals a problem with orcs that could be a sidequest. But one conversation reveals the place that the kidnappers have made into their home base -- so the PCs could try to go straight there, gambling that this would work. And so on.
The key is knowing when to "weave fate" together
Eventually they will cross trails with the kidnappers or ambush them or get ambushed by them. It might take one session or four. If it gets bogged down or really off track, I'll have an NPC or strong clue fall in their lap. By this time, they've had enough "play time" in the sandbox that they are really ready to board the train again.
Likewise, when I sense that the railroad plot-train has been going non-stop, then I let them off the train into a different sandbox of options.
For my group at least, this seems to please everybody.
Best Answer
It appears that you already know how to generate tokens and assign them to player control.
As much as possible you can do this in advance - things that players have control of in their Journal, they can drag and drop onto the screen. For example, I have a player who frequently casts spiritual weapon. I make sure I have an appropriate token for her in the journal before the game starts, and she can drag it to the board when cast. You can similarly make sheets in advance for creatures they might summon with a conjuration spell, or transform into using the druid's Wild Shape feature or one of the polymorph-type spells.
However, for truly on the fly player-creation of tokens, I don't think there is Roll20 support. One possible workaround would be to enable the players as co-DMs on the game, but require them to sign in as players for play sessions. If you wanted them to create or modify a token, you could have them log out, log back in again as a DM, do the work, log out, and then log back in as a player. In one game I DM, I have a player who occasionally acts as my assistant. I ask him to follow that procedure when I need some tokens or terrain put on the board, or a macro written or edited, while I attend to something else. Provided he is not in the middle of his own turn, it is reasonably seamless.
Of course, this workaround assumes that you have players you can trust to not look at things they should not have player knowledge of (unrevealed areas of the map, NPC stats, GM text on handouts, etc.), since having DM powers means they can log in as a DM even when you are not present. In that case, a slightly different workaround is to give them GM powers in one game, so that they can create tokens / characters there, and when you have a chance you can move them to the game in which they are a player. Note that you can have two different games open at the same time. This way they can make the new token when it is not their turn, but you still have to move it over when you have a chance as a DM. Once it is in the game, they can drag it to the board.