I'm not a recruiter and have no vested interest in this, but the experience with recruiters from the candidate side is just completely different to justify their existence. From the company side, we also get better candidates from recruiters.
Applying through portals make you feel like a second-class citizen. Companies often ignore you, ghost you, have terrible screening, take ages to respond, give no feedback. Recruiters that reached directly to you have your back and will push for timely responses, will help you negotiate a salary and will prepare you for the interview.
With that said: I had good experience with internal recruiting too. My best salary offer I got was from a company that had internal recruiting (I accepted and work at this company).
But I hope I never have to fill a form in a website ever again.