Even though Kong uses Nginx under the hood as a user you interface with Kong through the CLI or REST API and don't deal directly with Nginx or it's config files

Even though Kong uses Nginx under the hood as a user you interface with Kong through the CLI or REST API and don't deal directly with Nginx or it's config files. While Kong is a mix of Nginx + Lua + Cassandra it's meant to take the place Nginx in your software stack.