Maybe there's no technological innovation, but they do make things a lot easier. I set up my own email server once (for sending mail from a webapp) and after doing that once I'm happy to use mailgun from now on (it is non trivial to configure a mail server to deliver mail to all major email providers without getting flagged as spam).

Sometimes avoiding the cloud services is the right decision, and I think many architectures are overly complicated based on current and prospective performance requirements (cargo cult infrastructure/architecture), but used properly they save many thousands of hours of engineering time.