JEE and Rich Client?

After having gained some profound experience in the (old) J2EE patform some years ago and diving deeply into the Spring framework in the recent years, my interest in the JEE platform has risen again. So I started a private software development project based on the JEE platform in combination with the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP).

The following questions I hope to clarify:

• How does the 'new' JEE feel in every day life of a software developer who is used to the Spring framwork? 
• Is it possible to use JEE Web Profile (e.g. based on Tomcat/TomEE) as backend/server of a rich client architecture (by replacing the spring stack) or do we need a full JEE container for our needs? 

I started a new blog to document my work and - hopefully - share some new insights.