The nice thing about an SSH tunnel is that it only exists when you create it, on the fly, per use, with your SSH credentials. And it is only accessible if you possess an authorized private key. An SSL connection through a browser doesn't fill the same role. SSL provides privacy and security in the communication between server and client. If you are accessing through a web browser you are probably talking to a web server, but SSH allows you to tunnel any protocol (web, rdp, whatever) forwarding traffic, encrypted, across a chosen port.