I play live quite often and mostly use the headphone out to the PA. I run the latest BIAB Audiophile and am currently using a Lenovo ThinkPad, but over the years have used Samsung, Sony and Dell laptops. On my previous rig (Samsung laptop) the earphone jack became erratic, so I tried a Focusrite Scarlet 2i2 USB which turned out to be somewhat unreliable. I believe this has to do with drivers/configuration battles between W10 and BIAB when the Focusrite was connected to a USB port. I also used an M-Auidio Fast-Track C400 USB interface which seems to have no driver problems at all.

However, for this life of me I cannot tell any difference in audio quality between any of these interfaces. Headphone out is sure the simplest way to go.