And yet I instantly prefer DO to AWS because of the experience and good customer support and developer relations. Takes almost no time getting up to speed, while AWS feels like a better fit for large enterprise, which I'm not in that world. Codestar all they want, it's still AWS.

I don't necessarily think so. There's still a reasonable market for things like DO/Heroku, AWS inherently isn't trying to make it easier for people. I just wish I could have their image support and interface with dedicated hardware.