@skyblond Yup you sure can. In fact I've seen people use LED matrices as a poor mans touch screen. You light up the leds and basically measure the current draw. When you block it with your finger it reflects some of the light and changes the current draw slightly. So you can use this to detect where the finger is.
So in this way you can use it as both a light-emitting device AND a light-detecting device at the same time.