From the point of view of working only “including” some dynamic / static content on a web page, you are right.
However, there are a number of amenities, such as support for personalizing the portlet (at the portlet / "enabled" level) and storing this information, a tougher workflow for configuring what is displayed on the portlet, etc.
Plus, obviously, there is all the portlet layout code that you have to write differently. Some portlet servers do a lot on the client side to build (drag and drop portlets, etc.).
You can find some of the discussions at the URL below:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/i-portletintro/