changing the white balance affects the camera's perception of white. this is done to compensate for different colour lighting. For example, under tungsten lighting white is perceived by our eyes as yellowish, so the camera adjusts for that to make the white look like white. But if you use tungsten white balance under normal sunlight, everything will look cooler.
So that works something SIMILAR to a filter, but can never replace the filter. Firstly, unless u shoot raw, it is very hard to predict which white balance u need to create the effect you want. Using white balance also has limited possibilities, unless u know how to play with white balance compensation or kelvins.. you also cannot replace other filters like polarisers, nd, star effect filters etc... the only thing that u can minimally replace is the colour filters....