Much better prices, and simplicity. The power you get from Hetzner or Kimsufi is crazy compared to AWS.

If I need to host something small, I don’t want to mess around with the many permissions and quirks that are required to deal with AWS. It is often much easier to just setup the server on a standalone service.

This.

When I worked at Microsoft, I seldom used Azure for personal use due to it being expensive and complicated.

Whereas I have plenty of Fourplex.net servers because even on half the salary, it's affordable enough for 16 Tor exit relays and two personal web/email/Mastodon servers.