You missed a big one:
Toolboxes: The set of toolboxes available for MATLAB is rich, capable, and documented. Yes, if I hack enough things together there are packages available for other languages that can do some of what MATLAB toolboxes can do. But at the end of the day, when I need to design filter coefficients, find a stabilizing gain, etc. I turn to MATLAB because it's there, I don't have to hunt for the packages, the results are repeatable on a different machine with a different version of MATLAB, and my time is worth something to my employer.

In many of the engineering courses I took, there was a choice to get a sold A or to learn the material. Those wanting the best grade got the old tests from student organizations or friends. It's difficult to compete with students who already have the full test. Granted, they don't learn much from the course but they end up with the better GPA. Now, this could have been helped had the professors not been so lazy as to recycle material and/or if the professors had given out all their old material at the beginning of class, which some did.

There were whole areas of EE in which I didn't even take classes because the professor who taught them gave the exact same test every semester and only graded the answer in the box. This is for both undergrad and graduate courses.