I guess you mean update it with every new release.
If you're talking about tagged releases then no. HISE rarely gets a new release. But it is updated every few days on the develop branch and that's what pretty much everyone is using.
Is HISE meant to be only used to create and export instruments or is it also meant to be used as a general sampler where you load up a patch inside HISE in the same way you would do to Kontakt and use the sound?
HISE is like an IDE for developers to use to create plugins/apps, it is not end user software like Kontakt. However it is possible to build HISE as a plugin so you could run it in a similar manner to Kontakt but there will be performance issues since the projects won't have been optimized and compiled.