In my mind it's a tough call. There are pros and cons to both approaches. I've pretty much decided to go with a JDM swap. It looks like it's going to be considerably less expensive and doing all that work on a motor that apparently has over 200K miles on it just seems more risky than rolling the dice on a JDM.
totally different engine to the EJ series... and a LOT more work
We have an 06 LL Bean with the H6, also with headgasket problems.. it is parked on the car trailer at the moment while we decide what to do with it...