What do ripples in frequency response curve of filters depict?
Bode plots show both gain and phase for good reason. Looking at only the gain response without considering phase response, you're missing an important part of the system performance.

Butterworth gives the least gain ripple in passband and stopband, and has lowest phase distortion / group delay -- though higher-order filtering is needed to achieve a decent cutoff slope. If your application cares about group delay or phase shift, then Butterworth gives the least distortion. Unfortunately, to achieve both zero passband ripple and very steep cutoff stopband transition at the same time, then a very high-order Butterworth filter would be required. Near-ideal performance usually has a high cost -- in this case, a higher-order filter requires more components and thus more money and board layout space.

Chebyshev or elliptic improves the cutoff transition, making a very steep cutoff for comparable order. Higher-order filters usually require more components, so this translates directly to saving money and board layout space. However the real cost is that these types of filters require accepting some level of ripple in the passband and stopband (and the phase response is not so linear as Butterworth). There is some design flexibility, you can trade off how much gain ripple is acceptable.

Passband ripple does indicate that there will be some level of distortion in the signal -- the question is whether the level of distortion is acceptable. If maximum passband ripple is 0.1dB and signal-to-noise ratio is good, the ripple may not make a difference. But if zero passband ripple is required, then you need a Butterworth filter.

In an application requiring least distortion, Butterworth wins. In an application requiring low component count but where neither group delay nor passband ripple is important, then Chebyshev or elliptic wins. It all depends on what signal characteristics are important.