With a good output filter to remove the PWM carrier it could probably be made to work, but it is far from ideal. For modulating diodes, I'm a fan of good old linear drivers. If you use a regulated switching power supply as a source and have the voltage just high enough to give adequate overhead without burning up a ton of power in the driver, it's not even terribly inefficient, especially compared to the old gas lasers.
My modulated 1W 445 consumes about 7W of electrical input. Compare that to a 1W ion laser that might consume 30,000W input and it looks pretty good.