Which Http Client to use for external services in Lagom 1.6.4?

Hello Lagom Developers and Akka Experts

I want to call external services over Http from my Lagom Application.
I am struggling to find a right way to do this.
I tried few solutions and not really satisfied and need your suggestions.

  1. I started to use play WSClient which is available by default in Lagom(1.6.4) and I could inject it in my Class. I read the documentation here Java WS - 2.8.x
    I did not like the way to configure the http proxy as mentioned here Java WS - 2.8.x
    What if I want to setup separate proxy for each http service?

  2. I started to check google and landed on this page java - What is the simplest way to consume an external REST service in Lagom? - Stack Overflow.
    I created another maven module, Defined service descriptor for external service, bindClient in my other module where I want to call the service. But where to define to proxy server settings, base url, TimeOut for the external service is still not clear. Anyway, I just wanted to try and started the lagom app in IntelliJ(Dev mode) and got error that serviceName=[ex-service] was not found. Hint: Maybe it was not started? Someone says to use --external-service with lightbend orchestration and someone mentioned to use and also mentioned not to use it in PROD. It’s really not clear how to do such a basic thing.

  3. Then I found that I have option to use akk-http. I haven’t tried to use so really cannot say about the pros and cons of using this directly.

  4. Last option for me to use is OkHttpClient which is also non blocking and also supported by Kamon monitoring.

Please help me here. Which approach should I take?