I'm not saying they are all are high quality, or relevant to your task, or that there are no C++ or Python equivalents - just that there is a high quantity of Java projects. Why not have a quick search? Maybe there is a project there that will convince you.

AWT is about the most prejudiced example imaginable - it was rushed out, disowned by its authors, and quickly replaced.

I think one of the key aspects of the java ecosystem is the idea of free reference-implementation libraries, but you can pay ridiculous amount of money for corporate versions with better implementations. For example, the BEA Systems implementation of Java itself and related tools seems pretty good, well-documented and so on.

I find Java itself and its OO style is pretty horrible for writing prototype code that can be changed quickly and arbitrarily - so, probably, any revolutionary ideas that require that flexibility of interfaces will be hard to iterate in java, and therefore we probably won't find many such projects written in java.