Big fan of React. For others using it, why use JSX instead of just doing everything in js?

In other words, why is HTML like this:

  <Group style={styles.group}>
          <Image style={styles.image} src='http://...' />
          <Text style={styles.text}>
            Lorem ipsum...
          </Text>
        </Group>

Preferable to something like this (which can easily be done with some helper methods wrapping the verbose React DOM methods):

  $group({styles: style.group},
    $image({styles: image, src: 'http://...'}),
    $text({styles: style.text},
       'Lorem ipsum...'));

No pre processing step required, and of course it's natural to imbed js in, er..., js.

What am I missing? Why keep the HTML part in all this?