Can an LED be used as a receiver and as an emitter?
Ordinary LEDs can also be used to detect incident light, because they work as photodiodes too.
You will need to amplify the incoming signal.

Take a look at this projects (Jeff Han is the first one that used LEDs as sensors):
https://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/
https://hackaday.com/2016/06/17/ask-hackaday-whatever-happened-to-led-light-sensors/
Or google &quot;LEDs as sensors&quot;

Source: https://hackaday.com/2015/10/13/citizenscience/

When light arrives, the LED acts like a current source that the virtual ground (inverting input pin) injects into resistor R1.
R1 is big because the signal is low.
That operational amplifier might need also a negative voltage supply because the output voltage becomes negative when current arrives.
See the next picture for a circuit that doesn't need a negative voltage supply.

Design by Texas Instruments:  https://www.ti.com/tool/TIPD176

The noninverting input is slightly pulled up in order to avoid a negative voltage supply.

About 10 years ago, I saw a schematics showing an operational amplifier that was used to amplify the low-level signal coming from the LED.
It was designed by Jeff Han I guess.
It should still be around.