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 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)