When you are a big stack on the bubble you have many possibilities to further increase your stack while decreasing theirs, so by the time you make it ITM you're way ahead.
Three examples from a recent SNG I played:
Hand 1
Blinds 250/500
UTG 1500
BTN 3500
SB (me) 5000
BB 1000
UTG folds, BTN raises to 1400. I have
and shove all-in.
BTN's raise tells you "I have a decent hand and will take it all-in against the short-stack, but if big-stack picks up a monster, I can still fold". He will fold here roughly 95% of the time. On the off-chance he doesn't, you still will be ahead of the shorties if you lose, and you can still win the all-in. I re-shove in this situation 100% of the time, adding another 2000 chips to my stack and taking a big chunk out of BTN's stack.
After that, I shove any two cards until someone's eliminated.
Hand 2
Blinds 250/500
UTG (me) 7500
BTN 750
SB 2000
BB 1500
I pick up the monstrous
and shove all-in. This is the perfect spot since if BTN folds, SB and BB will be folding like 98% of the time. If BTN calls, I probably just have to win a 40/60 and it's only a small loss for me if I lose. Then I can continue making +EV shoves again.
Hand 3
Shorty goes all-in UTG (same price as BB), donkey limps along, I have
and shove. BB folds, donkey folds. Shorty has 55 and I spiked a 9 on the turn to take it down.
Once again, the donkey limp there tells you he will fold very often. Even when your hand stinks like 9-high, it's very profitable to shove here. Shorty is on an extremely wide range of hands, and if he doubles up, so what? You still have a HUGE stack and everyone else is short. If you beat shorty with the all-in, you have an even larger stack to take with you ITM.
What happened in that SNG was ITM stacks looked like this:
Blinds 250/500
(me) 11900
SB 1100
BB 750
It wasn't very hard to get 1st here
These types of plays are especially important in turbos where ITM and HU play often comes down to luck of the cards because of the insanely huge blinds. Your advantage ITM/HU then comes from having a bigger stack and taking the +EV spots.