As to "why is the unit interval the canonical interval?", there is an interesting universal property of the unit interval given in some observations of Freyd posted at the categories list, characterizing $[0, 1]$ as a terminal coalgebra of a suitable endofunctor on the category of posets with distinct top and bottom elements.
There are various ways of putting it, but for the purposes of this thread, I'll put it this way. Recall that the category of simplicial sets is the classifying topos for the (geometric) theory of intervals, where an interval is a totally ordered set (toset) with distinct top and bottom. (This really comes down to the observation that any interval in this sense is a filtered colimit of finite intervals -- the finitely presentable intervals -- which make up the category $\Delta^{op}$.) Now there is a join $X \vee Y$ on intervals $X$, $Y$ which identifies the top of $X$ with the bottom of $Y$, where the bottom of $X \vee Y$ is identified with the bottom of $X$ and the top of $X \vee Y$ with the top of $Y$. This gives a monoidal product $\vee$ on the category of intervals, hence we have an endofunctor $F(X) = X \vee X$. A coalgebra for the endofunctor $F$ is, by definition, an interval $X$ equipped with an interval map $X \to F(X)$. There is an evident category of coalgebras.
In particular, the unit interval $[0, 1]$ becomes a coalgebra if we identify $[0, 1] \vee [0, 1]$ with $[0, 2]$ and consider the multiplication-by-2 map $[0, 1] \to [0, 2]$ as giving the coalgebra structure.
Theorem: The interval $[0, 1]$ is terminal in the category of coalgebras.
Let's think about this. Given any coalgebra structure $f: X \to X \vee X$, any value $f(x)$ lands either in the "lower" half (the first $X$ in $X \vee X$), the "upper" half (the second $X$ in $X \vee X$), or at the precise spot between them. Thus, you could think of a coalgebra as an automaton where on input $x_0$ there is output of the form $(x_1, h_1)$, where $h_1$ is either upper or lower or between. By iteration, this generates a behavior stream $(x_n, h_n)$. Interpreting upper as 1 and lower as 0, the $h_n$ form a binary expansion to give a number between 0 and 1, and therefore we have an interval map $X \to [0, 1]$ which sends $x_0$ to that number. Of course, should we ever hit $(x_n, between)$, we have a choice to resolve it as either $(bottom_X, upper)$ or $(top_X, lower)$ and continue the stream, but these streams are identified, and this corresponds to the identification of binary expansions
$$.h_1... h_{n-1} 100000... = .h_1... h_{n-1}011111...$$
as real numbers. In this way, we get a unique well-defined interval map $X \to [0, 1]$, so that $[0, 1]$ is the terminal coalgebra.
(Side remark that the coalgebra structure is an isomorphism, as always with terminal coalgebras, and the isomorphism $[0, 1] \vee [0, 1] \to [0, 1]$ is connected with the interpretation of the Thompson group as a group of PL automorphisms $\phi$ of $[0, 1]$ that are monotonic increasing and with discontinuities at dyadic rationals.)
I'm going to be deliberately provocative and say that I don't really know of any use for the concept of bimorphism as such. (I also don't really like the name; it sounds to me like something that's both a morphism and a comorphism.)
One use that's been proposed is "to find situations in which bimorphism ⇒ isomorphism." Such situations may be interesting, but as far as I can tell they are rarely (if ever) used. What seems to happen much more often is that we have some factorization system (E,M) and we use the fact that E+M=iso, which is true for any factorization system. The most common case is probably (extremal epi, mono), followed perhaps by (epi, extremal mono); both of these are factorization systems as soon as the relevant factorizations exist.
It might happen, in some case, that E consists of exactly the epimorphisms and M of exactly the monomorphisms (such as when all epis, or all monos, are extremal). But as far as I can tell this fact -- especially the epi part of it -- is hardly ever relevant, because in practice it's quite hard to characterize the epis in a given category or to check that a given morphism is epi, nor is the answer often especially meaningful. Since monadic functors also create limits, and in particular monomorphisms, a morphism in a category monadic over Set is monic iff it is injective -- but this is not true for epis, and even in quite nice categories the epis can be fairly bizarre. It's usually the extremal epis which coincide with the "surjections" and form a factorization system with the monos.
For instance, Andrew cited vector spaces as an example of a balanced category. But as I pointed out in my comment, do we ever use that fact? What we actually teach our undergraduates is that injective+surjective=iso for vector spaces; we (or, at least, I) don't tell them anything about why surjective=epi, or even what epi means. And when doing linear algebra, I might occasionally use the fact that surjections are in particular epi (which just follows because the forgetful functor to Set is faithful), but never the converse. It's just as true for groups, rings, fields, monoids, etc. that injective+surjective=iso, and we use that fact in doing algebra all the time -- but does the non-surjective ring epimorphism Z → Q, showing that rings (unlike vector spaces) are not balanced, ever actually bother us in practice?
In the topological situation, it's true that the epimorphisms in Top are precisely the surjective continuous maps. But does that fact really help you when looking for conditions ensuring that a continuous bijection is an isomorphism, or using that fact in practice? Odds are the property of a continuous bijection you're going to use is that it's continuous and a bijection, not that it's monic and epic in the category Top.
The categorical version of "continuous bijection in Top" is "inverted by the forgetful functor to Set," and I think that in general the property of "being inverted by a forgetful functor" is quite interesting and important. For instance, a forgetful functor with the property that any morphism inverted by it is already an isomorphism is called conservative, and these include all monadic functors. The question about all the different topologies one can put on a given set also seems to me to really be about morphisms inverted by the forgetful functor; is it really important here that continuous surjections are the epis in Top? I expect that if you modify the definition of Top a little, then it may no longer be true that epis coincide with continuous surjections, and in that case I bet that it is the continuous surjections which are of more interest.
At this point, perhaps the most interesting thing I know about bimorphisms is that they often form the middle class of a ternary factorization system. I'll be happy to be proven wrong, however.
Best Answer
The comments on the question point out that it's not really well-posed: the property "bijective" isn't defined for morphisms of an arbitrary category.
However, for maps between sets, "bijective" means "injective and surjective". A common way to interpret "injective" in an arbitrary category is "monic", and a common way to interpret "surjective" in an arbitrary category is "epic". So we might interpret "bijective" as "monic and epic".
Then JHS's question becomes: is there a name for categories in which every morphism that is both monic and epic is an isomorphism? And the answer is yes: balanced.
It's not a particularly inspired choice of name, nor does it seem to be a particularly important concept. But the terminology is quite old and well-established, in its own small way.
Incidentally, you don't have to interpret "injective" and "surjective" in the ways suggested. You could, for instance, interpret "surjective" as "regular epic", and indeed that's often a sensible thing to do. But then the question becomes trivial, since any morphism that's both monic and regular epic is automatically an isomorphism.