For loops are usually faster than arrayfun or cellfun, as the for loop does not need to invoke the function handle each time. The for loop also has opportunities for optimizations between statements that the arrayfun or cellfun would not have.
arrayfun() or cellfun() can be faster to write the code for, as they are a higher level concept. Not always, though: some of the twists one has to go through to create the behaviour as an anonymous function can be messy.
