Can the laser be instructed to follow the path of the trace or outline of an object or does it always working back and forth horizontally from bottom to top or top to bottom?
laser rastering is what you describe as back and forth and that is set in LightBurn with the Fill mode.
If you want LightBurn to generate code to follow the lines of the design, that is called Line mode but your design needs to be a vector based design and not an image.
You set these modes on the Cuts / Layers tab in LightBurn.
LightBurn offers documentation to help in understanding what we offer, how it works and when best to use that thing. It is available to you on-line, so you can review at your leisure. 
We have found this Simple Project (< click that) to be very helpful for our first time users.
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Good starting point for sure but seeing how so many are getting lasers not only with no experience or understanding of the machine or laser process…And often LightBurn is provided with the machine, maybe something like that Simple Project but a series of them which also includes using the simulator to explain a little about what’s going on. Conceptually to enforce experimentation and observation in the simulator before powering up the laser.
Even after taking a 2 hour course on laser cutting at a Fab Lab I was very cautious and apprehensive doing my first few burns. But here, we see people with 100W machines winging it with nothing but wanting to do what they saw others produce and throwing the documentation out the window to boot.
It was a little easier when machines were over a thousand clams but now you can pick one up for $200-$300 at the local corner store. 
Food for thought as I will often use the simulator to verify I have the settings the way I want for the outcome desired.
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