why not use fiber directly and use whatever sfp for much cheaper without worry of heat
DAC cables can get expensive, and nobody knows what to buy when it comes to fiber, unless you're running entire spools of the stuff inside buildings... OM3/OM4/OM5? Single mode/Multi mode? LC/SC? Regular people don't know this stuff...
For connecting via say a Macbook Pro, there used to not be Thunderbolt 4 SFP+ interfaces. So, you were pretty limited to some ethernet SFP+ module that you hope would actually work.
Also personally, if you can get away with a copper DAC, I would rather use that instead of fiber because you don't need any special modules.
Access points, for example, expect PoE.
For a lot of people, because they already have copper in the walls.
You are correct that 10GBASE-T really shouldn't be the default choice, fiber and DAC both have advantages over it. But compatibility is important, and there are a lot of situations where 10GBASE-T is just more convenient.