It's used to condition the raw power to make it cleaner, with a tighter voltage when efficiency or increasing the voltage is needed (a linear regulator is less efficient and can only step down voltage). That said, a linear regulator is better at making a cleaner output because a DC-DC converter adds it's own switching noise to the output.
And it can't make power from nothing. Increasing the voltage means lowering the output current (or increasing the input current) and decreasing the voltage means increasing the output current (or lowering the input current).