Asterisk dialplans give you full control. FreePBX gives you a GUI that handles 80% of standard PBX builds without dropping to the dialplan: extensions, ring groups, IVRs, time conditions, queues, voicemail, conferences, SIP trunks. For most operators that is faster than maintaining custom dialplans, and the GUI is easier to delegate to junior admins.
The trade-off is some loss of fine control. Heavily customised dialplans (multi-tenant routing, complex CDR post-processing) still benefit from drop-to-shell editing.