As a developer, that makes no sense to me. Do you really need a powerful remote editor? What do you need a remote editor for, other than checking that a config file was set up correctly, or reading a log file?
Also, quick & dirty code changes on development/QA environments when it needs to be fixed ASAP.
There's not many uses as you mentionned, but there are times when its really useful.
Another perk of it is using tmux and having a consistent environment you can tap into from work, home, the road, etc.
And a virtual machine seems portable, but I cannot use it on my phone/tablet, and I also cannot use it on most other machines that don't have that virtualization software installed.
I have nothing in my work machine but a linux shell. I just vi everyplace in the world, edit things there and compile there and then scp to the product. My work is 100% remote.