I haven't turned on MS updates for Win 7 for about a year since an update hung my system. What it was is apparently MS doesn't watch which version is on the machine otherwise it would have bypassed the buggy Win10 problem they had. Some may recall all the fuss. Good thing I had an image the day before, which showed that was the problem. I have since been waiting for confirmation that MS does a cleanup of it's old Kb's off my drive, before I allow it to install others. I'm still searching for that tech note that confirms it. I'm down to 1% of my C drive and waiting for money for a 1000Gig solid state drive, so I have to watch who stores what closely. ESET keeps bugging me about my tardy MS backups. But I'm surprised it is so dependent on MS updates to do it's job. You figure.
It's not dependent on Windows Updates being installed. But it makes sense to keep your system updated as it will make it much more secure. That is why it wants to keep your system updated.
