WSL2 _is_ a dedicated virtual machine for Linux on Windows. It runs under Hyper-V.
That was wsl1, wsl2 is much tighter integrated than just thinking of it as a VM running in hyper V.
WSL 1 was not a virtual machine. It was a re-implementation of the Linux kernel API within the Windows kernel. As such, it's probably more comparable to CoLinux (if that's still a thing).
It's not really about running linux applications as much as running your application in the same or similar environment to what you are ultimately deploying on.
Exactly, I could run in WSL but I run in Docker or VirtualBox to emulate the production environment.