You can always edit the RAW files from the camera, which essentially means working with the same data the camera chip had to generate the JPEGs.

Not quite. At the very least, the RAW file is a static file. Whereas your camera chip can make interactive decisions.

In any case, RAW files aren't even all that raw. First, they are digitised. They often apply de-noising, digital conditioning (to take care of hot and dead pixels), lens correction. Some cameras even apply some lossy compression.