It's more cost upfront, which is often a show-stopper. "Why can't you spin a beefy instance on EC2 when you need it for these 2-3 hours of intense work? It's so much cheaper!"

Also, a cloud VM, if it breaks, is replaced "for free" and "instantly"; fixing a physical machine has a cost and is a delay. Unless you're big enough to keep a spare (probably makes sense for many dozens of machines), it also looks a bit uneconomical from the business's POV.

Never mind that your cloud costs in a year end up being comparable to said workstation.