This is actually a great teaching tool. Firebase (my team) uses them for in person code labs. It's a huge time saver to know that everyone already has access to a Linux machine with the developer tools and helps the class jump right into meaty bits.

Also, fetching dependencies to a machine in a data center avoids bringing down the wifi in a class.

Actually if you’re frustrated with the web ui then just drop into a cloud shell instance and do everything from there “in the command line”

And even though the UI can be a bit sluggish at times i can’t say AWS was any better last time I used it