Yes, there are penalties to withdrawing from a Roth before 55, so the profits are locked up for a while, but 0 state and federal income tax can be worth it.
Many Roth custodians (Schwab) only allow public company stock, so it does require some work.
To your question, it is always better to have free and clear money with no restrictions, which means 0% tax now is better than locked up funds that you also wont have to pay taxes on in the future. Retirement products and trusts are judgement proof though sometimes even against ex spouses, not IRAs though), so if you have or expect to have creditors, better not to have assets in your name. Even better is to only have debt in your name so you can just tell people to get in line, or discourage them from ever bothering with the courts at all. Stuffing Roth IRAs are good for that.
So people generally like a paper trail for that