When uncertainty is high, and an intense discussion is needed, spoken word is much more efficient, from my experience. People are fundamentally better at speaking quickly and taking proper turns. This all is much slower and more cumbersome in video call, phone call, or a text chat. The perceived sequence breaks, the turn-taking protocol breaks (unless enforced by a moderator, at the expense of speed), and the communication become slower, less efficient, and more tiresome.
I love neatly written logically organized texts. But to produce such a text, a lot of the questions it answers should be already understood, answered, and arranged in a easy-to-consume order. There are situations when this is not possible, and finding out the scope of the problem and its structure is exactly the task. Here's where face-to-face verbal communication rules.
Of course, providing some written output after such a meeting is important, too, be it nicely written minutiae (a shared document on a large screen works well), or just a photo of the whiteboard.
So, both written and face-to-face types of communication are important. None can efficiently replace the other.