Largish EL drivers are nice, of course, for driving large amounts of EL panel or wire - but they’re kind of overkill if all you want is to drive a single EL panel, like an LCD backlight. A small EL driver circuit for such cases would be really handy.
(EDIT): In particular, I have heard that there are dedicated EL driver ICs which produce less audible and RF noise than the simple transistor oscillators that are sometimes used. There’s [this thing, for instance, based on the Sinopex SB6542.](backlight4you)