One part where emacs beats vim is the ability to embed images. Emacs + AucTeX is by far the best editing platform for LaTeX because auctex converts the math snippets into images and displays them in emacs buffer. It is possible to write the backend support in vim as well, but not possible to display the image inside the vim buffer.
I guess this is a difference in philosophy. I prefer to use a te t editor for editing all types of text: code, emails, tex markup, HTML markup, etc. Hence, for me, a text editor is better than a word processor. But I do like the convenience of not having to go back and forth between a previewer (PDF reader) and the text editor, and therefore like the fact that emacs allows embedding of imaging. (Not to mention the fact that none of the word processors can beat TeX output in terms of quality and flexibility)
