I'm running HACS in the container release right now, it's worked for a long time. So long as you have your HA configuration folder as a volume etc it will preserve across restarts/upgrades.
I'd go as far as to argue the (officially supported!) container release is the best way to get a production quality install of HA - containers are a great way to package and release complex web apps like HA. Mines automatically updates itself every time new container image released, has done so with no intervention from me for over a year. With the container lifecycle/config, you don't really need Supervisor mode either.
To say it is crippled is nonsense, it is literally one of the two officially recommended install paths:
HACS works in a container, or is there specific functionality of it that doesn't work? I've been using it inside a Docker HA container on a Pi without issue.
