I think it is because a famous use of Erlang is in some telecom switches. I wonder if this really IS a noteworthy part of Erlang or just the most famous project.
The one time I noticed using software written in Erlang was Wings, a 3d modeller.
In particular, Erlang is fantastic for gluing other systems together (in particular if they speak strange protocols), or controlling and supervising, distributing traffic, etc. But it can be used for a wide variety of tasks (as Wings3D has shown).
A "dutch baby" is not a baby. But this tiny ad is baby sized:
a bit of art, as a gift, that will fit in a stocking