Well, the term gets muddled with what counts when lumping characters in (far longer than the smash stuff with Kazuya), but most of the time it's someone who has:
>fireball projectile
>tatsu (an attack that moves them forward during it)
>uppercut move that generally also works as a counter to people in the air (anti air)
They tend to be the all rounders, but then you get guys like Akuma, who's a shoto but he's different from Ryu and Ken who's that basic to play shoto character (glass cannon + some extra moves like demon flip), Terry's shaky because he has moves that are similar enough to the archetype and can be considered as such, but has bunch of extra stuff or some property changes, and then there's games who do an easy to pick up character, but they don't really resemble it. Like say Shiki from Melty Blood and Jotaro from Jojo Heritage for the future are beginner characters, but they have little to no resemblance to shotos in terms of those core 3 things. And then Kazuya's gameplay style completely differs due to his game's own mechanics and how it originated from virtua fighter styled gameplay rather than general 2D that street fighter and others do.
Kazuya didn't even get his devil beams added into his normal character moveset proper until TTT2/7.
Like they tend to be the beginner or face characters, yes, but it depends on the game style and moveset or said character. Doesn't help that it's honestly tricky at times when it comes to labelling characters as such.