AWS Step Functions is hardly a hidden tarpit. Step Functions are AWS' answer to the question "how can we easily execute lambdas from AWS triggers as part of a

AWS Step Functions is hardly a hidden tarpit. Step Functions are AWS' answer to the question "how can we easily execute lambdas from AWS triggers as part of a Saga?" Sagas are hard, and developers already use AWS stuff like S3 and SNS to run lambdas as part of transactions. Providing a high-level Saga service sounds like a solution to everyone's problem, but getting it right seems to be a problem too hard for AWS. But you do not need a Step Functions to run Lambdas, specially if you don't have to run them as part of distributed transactions.