The complex stacks are insane to operate yourself but very simple to operate if you use a managed offering instead, and they do provide genuine value.
I can set up a new golang app on ECS with a load balancer and database, with a CI/CD pipeline, with 0 downtime updates in about 30 minutes. Most of that time is waiting for AWS to give me a load balancer. Our work applications have been running with this setup for over 2 years and the only thing Ivs done with infra in that time is adjusted instance sizes and bumped a MySql version.
To be fair, I can set up a new service on bare metal in minutes too, mostly because I don't need to set up everything from scratch.
I don't really need to set up a database or load balancer or anything like that because it already exists on the server. Just create a new database schema, new systemd service, new nginx rule.
I can set up a new golang app on ECS with a load balancer and database, with a CI/CD pipeline, with 0 downtime updates in about 30 minutes. Most of that time is waiting for AWS to give me a load balancer. Our work applications have been running with this setup for over 2 years and the only thing Ivs done with infra in that time is adjusted instance sizes and bumped a MySql version.