There’s no mixed answer:
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One instance of LightBurn can communicate with a single laser at one time, and maintains an active connection, so a second instance of LightBurn cannot communicate with the same laser as the first instance. A number of users will run a 2nd copy of LightBurn to prep a design while the first instance is running, then try to send a job to the same laser from the second instance. This doesn’t work.
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Anthony (Grumpy) says you can’t communicate with more than one laser at the same time. This is correct. With a Ruida system, you can send a job to be cut and the machine buffers it while it’s running. Once the send is complete, you can pick a different laser and send a job to that one. If the laser you’re talking to requires streaming the job (like most GCode controllers) the connection has to be kept until the job is complete.
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There is no issue communicating with multiple lasers using multiple instances of LightBurn, each communicating with a different laser, either via USB or Ethernet. On a Mac this is troublesome because MacOS itself prevents multiple instances of the same application from running, but that’s an OS issue, not a LightBurn issue.