You can use the portal and one internal connection at the same time. I use both purposely as it adds another level of notification in the event of sketchy activity.
As a side… I wrote a “tutorial” on how to use nodealarmproxy to allow multiple connections to the same evl here: Setup a DSC EVL-3 proxy with nodealarmproxy
As for not seeing any activity, post up your items, things etc. I suspect you have something configured a little off. What zone type or definition do you have assigned to these zones on the DSC system? I found that the 24 (I think it was) that is listed for automation purposes doesn’t send events.