These were my exact same thoughts. I suppose its almost like a step back from the framework of "virtualize everything"... what's old is new..

addon thoughts: nonetheless, the specs on the bare metal box are ridiculous. buying something like that will cost you $50k (someone correct me?) - then you need to find a place to host it... thats not easy to do.

Because they're still virtualizing literally everything but the actual computer. You can attach NVMe backed EBS volumes, snapshot them as normal, etc. You can have this thing exist in a vpc next to your virtualized components, with 25gbps dedicated link. They're virtualizing the things you shouldn't need to care about, leaving you with a free Cpu and access to all the things that make aws aws

Regular dedicated servers don't have VPC, EBS, etc.