It's a bit 6 and half a dozen with jailbreaking - it's bypassing a phone restriction to allow you to do things the makers don't want you to do (e.g. installing unapproved applications, changing icons etc.) BUT, as mentioned above, it does open you up to potential problems - as you have removed some of the OS safeguards.
Updating to 6.1 from 5.1.1 gives you a few changes - most notably the Maps as you rightly say and, even though you can install Google Maps now, Apple do not allow you to change the default applications. So opening up a link in a different application will always open Apple maps instead of your preferred choice.
Apple Maps are still very much an inferior product to the Google version IMHO.
With a jailbroken phone you can change the default behaviour so the phone works more as you want it in that respect.
You could always jailbreak your current version and save the SHSH Blobs to allow you to restore to 5.1.1 if you didn't like 6.1 (using RedSnow)