More or less. With UORice you have more work to do, and two client files to deal with. With UOGateway, you just type in an IP (or choose a public shard from the list), and go. Once you've typed in an IP, you don't have to type it again. It appears on the Custom Shard list.
As I said before, I also use it so that I can open more than one client at a time.