I suppose, in my experience, the amount of code you need to write to get all that stuff to happen without manual intervention is usually much greater and more c

I suppose, in my experience, the amount of code you need to write to get all that stuff to happen without manual intervention is usually much greater and more complex than just creating a couple instances and ansibling your code onto them. The "you don't have to manage infra!" wave is technically true, but it's not that you have to manage less, just what you manage is different.