The digital archive or cloud storage will likely in many cases not even be discovered. And if it is discovered, it will probably be such a load of images, good and bad, that no-one will have the time to really look it through and appreciate it.
But for sure, both options combined is probably best.
If I had a gigabytes of photos of my grandparents or great grandparents I would spend hours pouring over them looking at what their life was like before I knew them. That would be such a neat keepsake.
Given their is no real customer service team that handles their free tier accounts, I am personally reluctant to assume my Gdrive data will be salvageable.
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en
(That's not to say there aren't other concerning reasons why that data may not be accessible.)
How do you do this?
My experience has been the opposite, with relatives eagerly snatching up the old photographs.
My boss is young and one of those people for whom digital is the only way. Then one day she got a box of old photographs and was absolutely amazed that she could turn them over and read where they were taken, on what occasion, and who was in the photos.
She now prints out all of her photos and writes notes on the back of them and keeps them in a box, just like people have done for the last century.
My experience is that when someone dies, all their paperwork gets left in a drawer for years until the next house move and then it's all thrown out.