Not sure what you exactly mean… look, I can put whatever I want in a <li> Google Chrome – Tapes and W3C is fine with it. Lists guaranty, and for a long time, that a fancy layout degrades correctly, with a decent hierarchy, when viewed on a very low end browser (ie no browser at all but a device for visually impaired people, or a console).
It’s an accessibility matter. Use and abuse of lists. When an element has siblings, you can think of a list. Sometimes grids of floating divs are a pain to maintain when an inline list works like a charm.