I've seen the word used in certain contexts, mostly legal, to denote "hereinabove", which in itself, you must surely admit, is at least
slightly fancy, but I've never seen it used instead of "sección" or "encabezado" or "título", although that's probably indicative of my ignorance of Spanish academic writing. Just to be clear, I certainly don't think there's anything
wrong with fancy.
Now, if, as Kathryn says, you don't divide text into headings, then you wouldn't divide them into epígrafes either. I actually don't think this is the case though and neither does the Oxford:
‘The document is divided into three main headings.’https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/headingBy the way, if you read past the "fancy" part, you may notice that I said "heading
or section" in my answer too :-)