Is this what we would see with the naked eye if we were close enough to the black hole? Or would we see nothing, because at this distance we would be dead (or the universe ended all around us)?
These obs are in radio. We could replace your eyes with radio eyes... ..but it's friction heating so it ought to be broadly blackbody, so I would say yes.
This image is a representation of radio observations. What we would see in the visible part of the spectrum would be different but the structure would likely be similar.
You'd probably be dead from the radiation (that light peaks in the x-ray wavelengths) long before any of the spatial distortion effects got to you.
regular orbits around black holes are possible. Depending on activity if it's far enough away the radiation should be survivable, it just depends on how much matter it's eating up and whether the orbit is planar enough to its spin (otherwise its jets can be deadly).