In some cases, situations may require the use of HEC-1 rather than HEC-HMS. Although, I guess I'm thinking of cases where there's already a HEC-1 model existing. If you're going to be starting from scratch, I agree that there would generally be no reason to use HEC-1 over HEC-HMS. I feel quite* comfortable modifying an existing HEC-1 file, so that would be no problem.
I believe that HMR49 requires the use of HEC-1, but I would assume that's solely because it was written before HEC-HMS was released, not because of any actual preference.
*I was going to say "perfectly comfortable", but I realized that in the past when I was modifying HEC-1 files, I was using some Dodson software to do it - it just made it a bit easier since it had the fields set up like a spreadsheet, and help text at the bottom.