you can combine different network adapters/storage options and instance types and also create your own virtual network, with various other options. while these VPS providers only allow a specific amount of storage for a specific type of instance and also have a included traffic option while ec2 does not have that. I mean more and more VPS providers have an API, but they still don't have the customizability and services like a cloud has, yet they are preferable in many use cases.

DO has block storage, Vultr has it on a couple regions and Linode seems to be preparing for that too.

How is what you described different than what DigitalOcean provides with droplet?