Theres a better description of the differences here: https://build123d.readthedocs.io/en/latest/OpenSCAD.html#tra...

Some of the differences may be in when you are trying to reference a face/edge to build off of, not just about the primitive function being used.

OpenSCAD works natively with triangle meshes. sphere() will create a spherical triangle mesh.

These libraries on the other hand can natively represent a sphere for instance. This means that during CAD-ing you don't need to worry about resolution, that's a consideration for export only.