On the topic of multiple STA components
It is possible to have two instances of the same STA COM component and access them from C#. The only thing that could prevent you from such scenario is the object itself if implemented as a singleton object.
However, if both instances are on the same STA thread, an active call in one of the instances will block any other calls into that thread. Thus, if you want those two instances to work in parallel, you need to have them be on separate STA threads. Just to be on the safe side, I'd create both instances on background threads. That should prevent your UI from locking.
On the topic of STA vs. MTA for the external component
I am not sure why the component being in C would prevent it from being an MTA object. Being MTA just means the object needs to internally synchronize it's state access and management code between multiple threads.
WARNING: Ugly hack! :-) If you want to experiment a bit, you could go to the registry and change the external component threading model from Apartment to Free, just to verify that your code would work properly with an MTA. Their component will probably break, though, as they probably did not write thread-safe code, relying on COM to guard them.
Make a note on a prominent place to revert that change later, so that you don't end up with a system where their code doesn't work and spent countless hours chasing ghosts. :-)