> It's not that complicated if you limit yourself to the core stuff

Completely agree. I use Kubernetes (basically just Deployments and CronJobs) because it makes deployments simple, reliable and standard, for a relatively low cost (assuming that I use a managed Kubernetes like GKE where I don’t need to care at all about the Kubernetes engine). Using Kubernetes as a developer is really not that hard, and it gives you no vendor lock-in in practice (every cloud provider has a Kubernetes offer) and easy replication.

It’s not the only solution, not the simplest either, but it’s a good one. And if you already know Kubernetes, it doesn’t cost much to just use it.