Text equates perform a single text substitution on a line. They do not allow any parameters. However, you can replace text anywhere on a line with a text equate. You can expand a text equate in the label, mnemonic, operand, or even the comment field. Furthermore, you can replace multiple fields, even an entire line with a single symbol.
Macro functions are legal in the operand field only.
However, you can pass parameters to macro functions making them considerably more general than simple text equates. Good and Bad News Macros offer considerable convenience. They let you insert several instructions into your source file by simply typing a single command. This can save you an incredible amount of typing when entering huge tables, each line of which contains some bizarre, but repeated calculation. Few would argue that ForLp I,1,10 is not more readable than the corresponding 80x86 code.