The ability to convert geodatabase annotation to map annotation in ArcMap would be useful. There are plenty of tools to go the other way.
Annotation is stored at a certain scale, 1:100,00 for example. When using the annotation at say 1:50,000 it's twice as big as it should be. There is no scaling option available to scale the gdb annotation on the fly (perhaps this should be a separate idea?).
Also sometimes text needs to be manipulated (moved, rotated, formatted etc) to make it legible, having it as map annotation makes it much easier and safer.