well i can clearly see that many people in this thread have not played live electronic music but are using live for something else entierly. personaly i have played live about 6 times the last year (2003) and i have just now begun to play with ableton live in the studio since my friend got it. So i may not know enough about live to voice my opinion but ill do it anyway.
these are my previous set ups live
1.
RM1X sequenser
Nordrack2 Synth
YamahaA5000 Sampler+efx
Redsound bpm federation efx
Mackie CR1604
A compressor (think it was a dbx 166 or something similar)
Styles played during set
(ebm psy trance techno hardstyle)
2.all of the above plus laptop running reaktor (6pack ensemble+small DSQ32 style seq controlling a junatic+graindelay)
Styles played during set
(progressive trance swedish style)
3.Just my laptop plus nordrack(used as a controller only) running Traktor
Disclamer

(some would call this cheating but i dont since some edm is impossible or just plain pointless to play live) why did i not use a dual cd player and a mixer instead? well since i am actually not that good at it and we had no money to rent one plus i already had the computer
Styles played during set
(psytrance chill)
4. Just my laptop running Reaktor plus a nordrack2 as a controller
(using 6pac only)
Styles played during set
Techno(schranz)
Disclamer
Well why did i just write all of my live setups to give u an insight into what i have tried so u know what the hell i am talking about
As u can tell i play various styles of edm when i play live and no i cant play any instrument (well i can play piano and bass but not that good).
My experience with these different setups are these
1. Nearly all the styles of music i make demand some form of continous tweaking of the synth sound (cutoff resonans envelopes fm etc) these are not loopable as a audio loops since the loop would be nearly as long as the entire song leaving no room to improvise making the whole "live" thing pointless
2. Having an all hardware setup is a serious pain in the ass and not that fun (having to stop between tracks sometimes when to many of the patches needs repclacements). it also takes a lot of preparation to pull an all hardware set of (for me at least a month but i am also a student so i dont work with music full time)
3. I need midi in all of them and since i like my nordrack2 so much and since i like my Reaktor (VST) so much i need some way of playing midi clips before i can take ableton live up on stage (i will try to sync ableton to my RM1X if that works well then i will be in heaven)
so i say in with the midi and look at how the RM1X handles midi (wich BTW is what i think they did in the first place when they designed live)
and no i dont really nead in deapth editing of midi since i make all my songs in cubase sx and on the RM1X
Disclamer i am from sweden so i know that my english is lousy but feel free to correct my spelling if u so wish