The appeal is the ability to make decent labels which can withstand almost all indoor use and abuse for a reasonable amount of time.

I generally hand-label my boxes and things with specialized ink, and they hold very well even after a decade.

But if I'm going to label a spice jar or something gonna handled a lot, I use the printer. It's legible, resistant/resilient enough and reprinting things is easy.

I think part of it is that these printers end up offering so much more flexibility than your traditional labeler. Single-font single-line labels are boring, crummy built in excuses for emoji…