I'm getting passionate about trying to port some of the things I like about developing humbleui back into my clojurescript workflow

the first thing: allowing me to float a window atop my editor!!

after researching this, it seems like it's not really possible without installing other programs with dubious security & effectiveness

I wonder if I could embed a chrome view inside of a humble window...

Theoretically. I know JetBrain folks are embedding CEF into their AWT apps

It's possible, but probably less plug&play than you were looking for, https://github.com/phronmophobic/clj-cef. There's an example that uses skija+glfw that could be adapted to humbleui, https://github.com/phronmophobic/clj-cef/blob/main/examples/browser/src/clj_cef/browser.clj.