In msn messenger emoticons were what emojis are today. So to me emoticons and emojis are the same... i dont what to call the things op refers to... maybe ASCII emoticons?
It probably doesn't help that a lot of things will take your emoticons and automatically convert them into emojis for you. Like you type :-) and it changes it to 🙂 without even asking. I've run into this in a lot of chat clients.