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Why do some referees actually stop the clock?

Strictly speaking, such referees are in violation of the Laws of the Game. This generally only happens at the amateur level. The referee has a stopwatch and, as the official timekeeper for the match, is supposed to add extra time to the end of each half for any stoppage of play. If, for example, a player is injured and it takes two minutes to get that player off the field and resume play, the referee should add two minutes to the end of the half. The referee is supposed to keep track of such stoppages in a notebook, but the simpler method is to stop the stopwatch for two minutes, thus suspending the game clock and negating the need to keep track of how long the stoppage is. The main problem with this lazy and illegal method of timekeeping is that the ref can sometimes forget to re-start the stopwatch. Also, if the clock is stopped too often or for insignificant reasons, the ref may be stuck with the dilemma of whether to call the game a bit “early” by the official watch.