Earlier quoted context omitted.
those give you access to modify remote files - vscode gives you remote search, debugging, building, testing, port forwarding, reproducable self-contained disposable environments, ...
You can do most of that with sshfs, It isn't much different than a mounted drive.
Having used both sshfs and vscode-remote for many years, I can assure you that vscode has a lot more features, with better integration; and even the features that sshfs does have, vscode-remote does the same thing better :)
(You can kiiiind of get the same features with sshfs + mosh + ssh + docker + a bunch of custom scripts + a suite of not-integrated command line tools... but that’s very much a “Why would anybody want to use dropbox when we already have rsync?” situation)