Each of the FTFont-derived classes has two constructors: one that takes a file name and another that takes a buffer. But there are no C functions corresponding to the buffer constructors.
The required code is, e.g. for FTTextureFont:
In FTGLTextureFont.h:
FTGL_EXPORT FTGLfont *ftglCreateTextureFontFromBuffer(const unsigned char *pBufferBytes, size_t bufferSizeInBytes);
In FTFontGlue.cpp:
C_TOR(ftglCreateTextureFontFromBuffer, (const unsigned char *pBufferBytes, size_t bufferSizeInBytes),
FTTextureFont, (pBufferBytes, bufferSizeInBytes), FONT_TEXTURE);