You almost certainly wouldn't use lambda for that (the last option I've listed is a case where you still could). You have several options. For many cases like

You almost certainly wouldn't use lambda for that (the last option I've listed is a case where you still could). You have several options. For many cases like that you should just have an EC2 instance that you run jobs on -- this is the simplest and there are already many tools for managing scheduled tasks like that. You could also use a scheduled Lambda to start an EC2 instance/record task info in a DynamoDB table and another Lambda to check the status of the task periodically, shutting the instance down when it is done and updating the status. I've written a thing that does this and it works pretty well. You can also use spot instances for this to potentially save some $. You can use ECS and kick off an ECS Task via a scheduled Lambda. This means learning some stuff about ECS and Docker. Another interesting but much more complex (and probably not applicable) option is to break your task up into chunks that take less than 5 minutes, and just have Lambdas kick off more Lambdas for the next parts of the task.