Hi Andrew,
As for explosion effects, doing them on cinema is better and will be closer to reality, and you have everything you need to do that in cinema in the best way. Also, doing it on After Effects requires effort to integrate the explosion with the scene components, otherwise it will just look like a pop that happened somewhere between the camera and the event arena. As for lighting, the matter is different, as there are many effects that can be done on After Effects more easily, and integrating lighting effects with the original scene will not pose a big challenge, this is only in terms of ease and time taken, otherwise you could do everything on cinema, and this is what I advise you to do, especially since you mentioned that you have no idea of how to do it on After Effects. I hope this is useful to you.