sp_MakeWebTask was likely dropped from the product in part because it sucked, and also because it was accepted that CPU time available on a database server is much better spent managing data and not generating HTML documents. To that end moving development dollars into furthering these capabilities within the Microsoft Data Platform Stack into a system that could be scaled up, out and extended far more easily and cost effectively, namely SSRS. You can generate HTML by doing a bunch of string concatenation in T-SQL and people do, and that handles many basic needs, but certainly not in a structured way with a proper HTML parser or object translation layer.

Similarly, Microsoft will eventually come to their senses and drop xp_cmdshell, in part for the same reasons mentioned above (especially the first one I mentioned) and provide a replacement tool. Oh wait they already did drop it...have you had a look at SQL on the Azure Platform? And they already have provided a capable and more robust replacement to bridge the OS-to-SQL Server gap, namely PowerShell.