Jose, all depends on your requirements. There are two main usage scenarios for jbpm (brms):
- as a service - using the deployed version of console
- embedded
As you already noticed that imposes different ways of managing the runtime engine. In as a service it provides you with basic capabilities like starting a process, signal a process instance, etc over REST interface. In embedded mode you have full access to all the API so you have much more options to chose from. But that flexibility comes with a need to include all dependencies of jbpm into your application.
With that said, is up to you what will be best fit for your application. Either way you'll have dependency on the jbpm regardless if that is bundled into your application or runtime dependency on the service exposed by brms/jbpm.
HTH