I agree. I've never used the sympal script but from what I understand
they have nothing to do with the code-style.sh and code-clean.sh
functionality. Devel.module is more appropriate

One case for script/ that I can think of, and something almost all of us would end up using almost daily :

http://drupal.org/node/59863

Essentially it's a command line wrapper for Drupal.

This can be useful for a great many things, but imo primarily for automating the install system.

for installing a new site of a specific distribution :
scripts/drupal.sh --cmd install.php --site mydomain2.com --db mysql://username:pass@localhost/dbname install profilename

for updating a specific site (useful in a script which recurrs through sites/ whenever you alter the source) :
scripts/drupal.sh --cmd update.php ---site mydomain.com update