I'd say it's more like comparing a horse to a car:
Horses were never really "vehicles." We just misappropriated them that way, because they just happen to be big and move around and we can sit on them. Cars are purpose-made to be vehicles for humans.
If a designer shows you their wireframes with their grid lines drawn on top of it, I don't think many people would think "ah! so it's like in a science paper when they're printing the raw data from their experimental results in tabular form."
The fact that some web developers consider them alike is a historical accident.
I disagree. Conceptually, it is exactly how you would do layout in the old days. This still works, btw, it's just considered bad practice.
It's a bit like saying that a kitchen knife is totally unlike a dagger and completely unrelated in every way, because the former is for slicing food and the latter for stabbing.