JavaBeans and EJB became things because Microsoft was eating everyone's lunch with their component paradigm, COM, on the client side and were making inroads into server-side enterprise computing as well. With COM, you could write components that just plugged right in to an application, in any language. Java, despite being ostensibly object-oriented all the way down, didn't have an answer for this until JavaBeans emerged and then EJB for the server side. You have to remember that Microsoft had a relentless focus on developers building stuff on top of their platform. That image of Steve Ballmer sweating like a mule and chanting "Developers! Developers! Developers!" wasn't just a meme, it was an indicator of the entire company's direction. Nobody could match them at the time. From Internet Explorer to Visual Studio, 70%-80% of Microsoft's monopoly was built in simply outcompeting everyone else. If people were locked into Windows, it was because it just made sense from a business standpoint.

But yeah, I built business apps with just Tomcat and no J2EE components and it was fine.