Databricks-Connect is by design a drop-in replacement for pyspark, essentially. It transparently takes over execution of the Spark parts without change to the program, and is definitely a different 'environment' from local pyspark.

As with any situation where you need to deal with separate software environments, you'd typically have a separate venv for each, and as such could have pyspark in one and databricks-connect in another. Does that not answer this?