If you embed an x86 system somewhere then you might find yourself not wanting to use GRUB because you don't want to display any boot options anywhere other than the Linux kernel. The EFI stub is really handy for this use case. And on platforms where UBoot is common UBoot supports EFI which makes GRUB superfluous in those cases.
Many of the Linux systems I support don't have displays and EFI is supported through UBoot. In those cases you're using a character-based console of some sort like RS232.
A lot of those GRUB options could also be solved by embedding a simple pre-boot system in an initial ramdisk to display options, which maintains all of the advantages of not using GRUB and also gives you the ability to make your boot selection. The only thing GRUB is doing here is allowing you to select which kernel to chain-load, and you can probably do the same thing in initramfs too through some kind of kernel API that is disabled after pivot root.
I just have two kernels with two boot options in BIOS. I just hit F11 at boot time and choose a BIOS boot option for either kernel. Of-course, you need to add the entries in UEFI, either from UEFI shell either with some tool (efibootmgr).
This scheme also supports secure booting and silent booting. The stubs are signed after being generated.
Many of the Linux systems I support don't have displays and EFI is supported through UBoot. In those cases you're using a character-based console of some sort like RS232.
A lot of those GRUB options could also be solved by embedding a simple pre-boot system in an initial ramdisk to display options, which maintains all of the advantages of not using GRUB and also gives you the ability to make your boot selection. The only thing GRUB is doing here is allowing you to select which kernel to chain-load, and you can probably do the same thing in initramfs too through some kind of kernel API that is disabled after pivot root.