Where is the "time and frequency" in a Discrete Wavelet Transform?
DWT is motivated by the ability to analyse the signal in time and frequency with an adaptative time and frequency resolution.

Some clever algorithm allows you to perform a wavelet analysis with a recursive implementation. Matlab's DWT does that, matlab's dwt perform only one level of DWT, therefore, A is only the output of the low-pass filter while D is the output of the high-pass filter. There is no time and frequency here.
It only gives you a very coarse information about the time-frequency content of the signal.
Please check how to implement a DWT.

Second question : To see the novelty, you have to compare that to short-time frequency transform. With the DWT the time-frequency resolution depend on the frequency while with the STFT it's always the same. This is a VERY DESIRABLE property : You want a short time windows for quicly mooving high frequency signals and a long window for slower low frequency signals. 

Moreover, please consider that the filtering/downsampling implementation is a very refined and efficient one. DWT is an incredible tool for analysis, denoising, feature extraction etc ...