You're right that there is more semantic value in ellipses vs the three bars - however I think the problem is that there's no standard. Blame it on operating systems for branding their start menus because it needs to be standardized first at an operating system level.

Every iconic web element is modeled after the standard for operating systems. Think close buttons, minimize, input fields. While ellipses is better, it's not good enough because it's a terrible practice to put actions out of sight. There is no icon that semantically represents "a group of various actions that are related" because for that we need words.