We obtain the gravitational form factors (GFFs) and investigate their applications for the description of the mechanical properties, i.e., the distributions of pressures, shear forces inside proton, and the mechanical radius, in a light-front quark-diquark model constructed by the soft-wall AdS/QCD. The GFFs, $A(Q^2)$ and $B(Q^2)$ are found to be consistent with the lattice QCD, while the qualitative behavior of the $D$-term form factor is in agreement with the extracted data from the deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS) experiments at JLab, the lattice QCD, and the predictions of different phenomenological models. The pressure and shear force distributions are also consistent with the results of different models.