It is uncomfortable, sadly. At the very least PHP Ratchet is not quite integrated with Laravel and the easy route is to use Node.

https://github.com/laravel/echo

I am not saying that as an attack to PHP (or a defense of NodeJS), I am writing PHP daily, but when it comes to real-time (at least WS systems), PHP would be my last resort, mostly because it lacks any real support for such things, you'll have to force your way in.

I guess we come back to _just because you can doesn't mean you should_. :)