Yes absolutely, you would just use sprites instead of tilemaps.
You still need to be careful though as having thousands of sprites in one layout (especially if they're just standing there looking pretty) will tank your FPS. So if you're creating a static background I would lay it out in Photoshop and export it as one sprite.
Also be sure to disable collisions on any static, non interactable, sprites so you can reduce calculations. Also if you have large levels (significantly larger than one screen) then don't forget to turn on render cells on the layers.
You should be good for desktop & web exports then. But not sure about mobile. I've heard on the forums people getting pretty bad FPS and battery life on mobile.