It seems cleaner to handle the UMG widgets on the player blueprint vs. the HUD blueprint - am I missing something?
Some people prefer to initialize UMG menu on Level blueprint, some on player controller some on HUD BP. I personally initialize UMG in HUD menu. You are not missing anything. Before UMG you had to draw all the textures and make collision rectangles from HUD.
I like to handle all my UMG widgets in the HUD blueprint, to separate concerns and keep the code more organized IMO. Also if there’s a very player specific HUD, i’d initialize it in the player controller but it’s very rare to meet that condition.