I suppose this depends on whether you're using your studio monitors for playing guitar or not. If you have a regular guitar amplifier or have a separate FRFR cabinet/powered cabinet, then it doesn't matter.
The future of electric guitar playing is modeling, where AI simulates/models the tones created by actual physical tube amplifiers. There are even DSP plugins that can do this, and although they don't sound as good as physical modelers, they're affordable and you only need your computer, audio interface and speakers.
Examples of physical modelers are the Axe FX 3, Quad Cortex, Helix, etc.
With a physical modeler, you can either use your studio monitors or a separate powered cabinet. With the plugins, you have no choice but to use your studio monitors.
This means you need an audio interface for pretty much your whole computer sound needs.
If you use an audio interface, you can't use anything else, as your powered studio monitors would be connected to it. Problem is many audio interfaces are lacking in the sound department. The one I have Motulite Ultralite MK5 is pretty decent but is nowhere near the level of audiophile DACs.
It's most affordable to use your studio monitors for guitar playing and everything else, rather than buying an actual powered FRFR cabinet for guitar playing only, even more affordable if you only use plugins, though the better tone, presets, and quality of actual physical modelers can't be denied.
Plugins cost $80-150 whereas physical modelers tend to cost more than $1500
Here is a video of all the tones/amp you can do with a physical modeler that costs $2300.
My 2 cents after a lot of time spent experimenting with guitar gear and computer-based audio recording.
Guitar amp and FX profilers/modelers are IMHO at a point where good ones can absolutely produce world-class sound, and if used well people won't really be able to notice it isn't "the real thing".
Both physical/HW-based and plugins/SW-based profilers/modelers can be great - the format does not necessarily imply anything regarding sound quality.
Audio interfaces are not a bottleneck at all since guitar is not really a demanding source to record - you don't need very high ADC/DAC performance to record a guitar performance with perfect fidelity.
However, actually achieving a great-sounding guitar recoding is not trivial, and I imagine many people trying will not be able to get it - regardless whether they use 'real' analogue guitar gear or profilers/modelers.
First it is important to understand that modelers/profilers allow you to do things that real analogue guitar gear won't do, and it is therefore easy to get unnatural-sounding results.
For example, a real tube guitar amp's high output impedance will interact with the specific guitar cabinet impedance characteristic in a unique way (see
frequency-dependent voltage divider circuit) which will color the sound in a way that is specific to that combination. This is just one example, but not the only one.
A good technical understanding of audio electronics, experience using guitar tube amplifiers, guitar cabinets and microphones, as well as experience doing standard audio measurements, IME helps a lot to get good results when using profilers/modelers.
This is actually where I see a very big benefit of analog guitar gear. In my experience it is much more intuitive to get a great and inspiring guitar sound with a cranked tube half-stack in the room. Such an experience can also calibrate a bit your expectations and preferences as a guitar player.
If you then spend some time trying to mic a real guitar cabinet you start to learn about the limitations of electric guitar recording - you learn quickly that impressive kidney-vibrating sound of a cranked half-stack which you can get in a room is basically impossible to get in a recording. Multi-speaker guitar cabinets have specific spatial dispersion/radiation patterns that are not captured in recordings; not to mention that the loudness when listening to a recording is usually nowhere near comparable to how loud a cranked guitar amp is - whereas human hearing is not linear with level (see
equal loudness contours) and is often biased to judge louder=better.
The recorded guitar sound can still be pretty great with some effort - just different!
It is important to understand that it is actually this recorded sound you can try emulate with a profiler/modeler; and
not the in-room sound!
However there is an exception, you
can get equally impressive in-room sound with a modeler/profiler when played loud through a power amp + a real guitar cabinet. But this also brings its own set of considerations...
Going further down the rabbit hole you learn quickly that guitar cabinet close-miking techniques are very sensitive to tiny changes in microphone position, distance and orientation, and that the room influences the sound of microphones further away from the cabinet. Sometimes there are even significant tolerances of what should be similar guitar cabinets and/or microphones. This is to highlight the fact that you won't usually get an identical sound when recording the same amp+cab+mic combination on two different occasions; whereas two different people with similar gear in different environments are even less likely to get the same result.
Yet we guitarists often obsess over differences between real and modeled/profiled gear which may objectively be even smaller and more difficult to hear!
I've recently acquired the Kemper Profiler Player and so far I have to say it is truly remarkable. The sound and response is very convincing, especially when played through the power amp of a tube guitar head into a 4x12" cab. In this use-case, and under controlled (blind) conditions, I doubt many players would realize they are playing a digital emulation of a tube preamp. But it takes a bit of time to set it up, tweak it and to find the profiles that work well. Similarly, making on-the-fly changes can be counterintuitive and can sometimes significantly degrade sound quality.
On the real amp you just plug in, roll some knobs to find the sound you like (with most settings sounding pretty good) and you're good to go. If you need to make tweaks the controls are directly exposed and intuitive/easy to use (analogue pots and switches). There's an undeniable appeal to this - it is simple, works great and looks impressive!
Unfortunately it is also bulky, too loud for most situations, requires maintenance, dedicated boxes for FX (which can quickly make it complex and error-prone), etc...
As with many things in life, I guess either approach has its benefits and weaknesses. I for one can definitely understand why many pros have switched to modelers/profilers, but I also fully understand people who find them unintuitive and prefer analogue gear!
