Plotting the CMB power spectrum - Why $C_\ell \ell (\ell+1)$ rather than only $C_\ell$?

I haven't got a great answer for this, but since no-one else has answered ...

As you mention, for the Sachs-Wolfe effect the $C_{\ell}$ values drop off as approximately $\ell(\ell + 1)$ so plotting $C_{\ell}\ell(\ell + 1)$ on the $y$ axis gives an approximately horizontal line and this makes it easy to see deviations from Sachs-Wolfe behaviour. However I suspect the main reason the graphs are drawn this way is that it nicely highlights the doppler peaks. If you just plotted $C_{\ell}$ you'd need to use a log axis and that would make all the peaks look smaller.