It sounds like you're describing the Lexer Hack[1]. That trick works just the same in an LR parser, so I wouldn't count it as an advantage of recursive descent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexer_hack

Yes, it is basically this. I feel that writing a recursive descent parser with recursive functions is a bit easier than using an LR parser generator or a back-tracking PEG parser from my experience. It also does not requirer any third party tools or libraries, which I see as advantage.