Two vapes can print the same potency figure and contain quite different things. The label word that matters is the one describing the extract.
Distillate
Distillate is produced by molecular distillation, which isolates a single cannabinoid to very high purity. Terpenes are not lost along the way as an unfortunate side effect; they are removed deliberately, because isolation is the entire point of the process. What comes off the still is potent and close to flavorless, and flavor is added back afterwards.
Live extract
A live extract starts from flower frozen fresh at harvest rather than dried and cured. That is all the word "live" means: it describes the material that went in, not anything living in the finished product. Freezing skips the window in which the lightest aromatic compounds off-gas, so the extract carries a terpene profile close to what the growing plant actually smelled like.
The flavor range is narrower as a result, because it is limited to what that particular material genuinely was. Distillate can taste like anything at all, precisely because the taste was chosen rather than kept.
Neither is a verdict
Distillate is not a lesser product by definition; it is a different one, and it is what makes consistent, high-potency, flavor-stable formats possible at all. What matters is knowing which you are holding, because the two behave differently and the label is the only thing that will tell you.