Both are one and the same while this tag is a much cleaner approach. It is like a html tag and ends as a normal HTML tag would.
The tag contains a prefix jsp which occurs before the : and the tag name is scriptlet. This is a pre-defined tag meaning, we need not load external tag libraries (aka taglibs) and these tags start with the prefix jsp. The syntax will be as follows
<jsp:scriptlet>
// code to be written in the scriptlet
</jsp:scriptlet>
Just as you would use the normal scriptlet tags, these tags can be inserted anywhere in the HTML file.
index.jsp
<html>
<body>
This is in the html body
<jsp:scriptlet>
out.println("This is in the scriptlet");
</jsp:scriptlet>
</body>
</html>