They're similar but a table can contain different types of data, though all elements in a column must be the same. A matrix/array must have all elements the same, even in different columns, except for a cell array which can have different kinds of variables at an element no matter where it is (no requirement that all elements in a column of a cell array contain all the same type of variable like is the case with tables and matrices).
You can use writetable() to write a table to a file.
