Why are telescopes like JWST orbiting Earth able to perform so much better than telescopes on Earth that aren’t restricted by their size?
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Size is good, but so is not having to look through an atmosphere. Air has two issues: it completely or partially blocks some frequencies which means that ground based telescopes simply can’t see those, and it causes distortion of the incoming light (twinkling, called seeing). This latter issue has largely been solved for the generation of instruments that are just coming online using a technology called adaptive optics. In the wavelengths it can see the ELT will be much better than JWST precisely because it will be so much bigger.
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