I have only used this feature in my electrum so I will only talk about it here and don't have idea about that feature on other wallets or services.
Watch only simply mean you can watch balance and all transactions going in and out of particular address in real time without knowing its private key, you just need to put your desired bitcoin address. But you will not be able to send any bitcoin out of that address.
You can see list of cold/hot wallet addresses for different exchanges in
https://www.walletexplorer.com/, and if you want to than put those addresses in your watch only wallet to see what those exchange platforms have in their wallets and its daily activity.