At some point, likely due to the talent option from way back in Wrath called Threat of Thassarian, Frost became the DK dual-wielding spec. Still, after DK specs were locked to tanking and dps, (if you didn't play in Wrath, you might not remember that all three specs could do both roles, and in fact, when initially announced, Frost was meant to be the tank spec and Blood the dps spec, while Unholy was expected to be a sort of PvP/Utility spec) the option remained from Cataclysm through Warlords of Draenor for Frost to choose between dual-wielding or two-handed weapons.
For a time, this actually changed their rotation/priority system. It flipped back and forth once or twice, but the Killing Machine proc used to make both Obliterate and Frost Strike auto-crit, and there were talents and later passives that would make Obliterate do more damage for dual-wielders and Frost Strike do more for those using two-handers (again, I'm pretty sure this flipped at some point).
As such, it was always a bit of a challenge to balance the spec, because there were, in fact, two mini-specs within it (similarly, Fury Warriors used to be able to use ordinary one-handed weapons and got a boost called Single Minded Fury when they did).
There were a couple factors at play:
Special attacks like Obliterate used to always be based on the main-hand weapon's damage - your attack power really just increased your weapon's damage, and that then translated to the damage of your attack (which led to some funky math, given that ability damage was calculated as "flat amount x" + "this weapon's damage," which meant that abilities might scale differently at different gear levels). So using a two-handed weapon meant that you'd deal more damage with your abilities, but a dual-wielder would also be hitting with their off-hand weapon to compensate.
Frankly, I don't pay as close attention to the mechanics as they work today, but I believe that ability damage is all calculated simply based on attack power, which means the type of weapon loadout you use shouldn't matter (and given that all melee specs are currently locked to one weapon loadout style, it's not like you have a choice).
For auto-attack damage (which also used to be a far larger percentage of the damage that melee classes did) I imagine they just balance off-hand weapon damage so that it makes up the difference for the higher damage of the single 2-hander.
For Frost Death Knights, however, it gets a little more complicated.
Death Knights have always had a very nice advantage, which is that they get weapon enchants for free as a class feature. I think Blizzard initially wanted you to swap out your forged runes based on the encounters you expected (there was one that did extra fire damage to undead, for example) but ultimately they wound up narrowing these down to the only ones you were likely to actually use.
Rune of the Fallen Crusader actually mimics the vanilla-era "Crusader" enchant, boosting strength for a short duration and also healing you a bit, and is the default rune for Unholy. Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle makes you tougher, though I think the self-heal and boost to strength from Fallen Crusader sees a lot of Blood DKs going with that one as well.
Rune of Razorice is the one designed for Frost, and causes a bit of frost damage to the target as well as stacking a debuff that increases their frost damage taken.
Now, the thing is, when dual-wielding, you can easily stack up this debuff with just one weapon, leaving the other free for Fallen Crusader, whose buff is obviously good for any melee combatant.
If you're using a two-hander, you have to give one of them up. Historically, Fallen Crusader was so good that you'd lose out on the boost to frost damage.
The thing is, if all attacks are based on attack power and they can easily balance auto-attack damage between two-handers and dual-wielding, in theory it shouldn't be hard to keep Frost balanced between these two weapon choices. But the runes create a bigger problem that plays into scaling, and that is where things get hairy.
Consider, for example, that if you drop Razorice, thus lowering your overall Frost damage you deal, that also means that your mastery, Frozen Heart, is less useful, given that all it does is boost Frost damage.
You could buff Razorice to the point that two-hander Frost DKs want to take it, but then they miss out on Fallen Crusader, and you've got to come up with some way to compensate them for the lack of Fallen Crusader's periodic strength boost.
Given that I'm by no means a game designer (apart from some D&D homebrew stuff) I wouldn't even know what problems to anticipate here. It's possible that the proper formulations - giving Obliterate and Frost Strike a little buff when using a two-handed weapon, or something - would solve this issue. But it does seem like a little imbalance that might cause problems in the long run.
Or, it could mean a .05% difference in DPS, and thus only matter to those who are chasing world first raid achievements.
What I do know is that I think two-handed weapons look cooler, so I'm going to go with that.
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