You can use your own HE node yep. Just like I am doing. Don't forget that if a light node, and you need for some reason you need to get very old blocks, it might not get you the right results.
For most stuff it will be ok on these front ends, because most of the functions are doing is most recent point in time. But if you are investigating things in the past, then light node will not work.
Oh, I am using my HE nodes on Beeswap... What I meant is using your Hive API on my streamlist in config.json for a HE node witness... I will maybe give it a try... Yesterday, my node couldn't catch up with the chain due to bad HIVE API nodes... ;)
Ah! That... if you try that, let me know how it goes. Don't yet put it in first, as I don't yet have HA. When I bring the second node for HA, I will be more comfortable asking people to add it anywhere.