Not related to this post, but why in the world is anyone using TUI. Either go with GUI or go with commandline. This no man's land in the middle is the worst of both worlds..
Command line often requires a lot of switch memorization. Command Line doesn't offer the full interactive/graphical power in this sort of situation. Command line is great for scripts and long running apps, or super simple interfaces.
Different apps have different requirements. Not everything needs a TUI, not everything needs a GUI, and if you want something similar to a GUI while staying in the terminal. Perhaps you don't have access to a windowing environment for some reason; perhaps you want to keep your requirements low in general.
Finally, why do you care? Some people like it others don't. Nobody comes in and shits on any programs that are GUI if they don't like it, they just don't use it. So, to quote The Dude: "That's just, like, your opinion man". Sorry for the snark, but... It really is, and you're free to have it. But it seems an irrelevant point, and there may be better forums/posts (maybe an "Ask HN" question would be a good option) to discuss this question in depth beyond snark.
[0] It is if course possible to make a light GUI and a slow+bloated TUI, but both are less common than the alternative.
[1] Sixel et al. exist but IME they rarely work well. Sadly.
Short summary: No animations, No symbols, No touch optimization, no responsive design and I do most of the other stuff in the Terminal anyways so TUI is better "integration" YMMV :)
You don't have to make a GUI with any of those.
edit: and a reason you would do this locally using ssh is debugging the UI layer itself. if you have to step through the window server, you can't be using the window server at the same time. Remote lldb/gdb debugging is often just flaky. I don't know why they're so unreliable, but they are.
Other times it's just a contrarian thing.