"Its just as difficult, if not MORE difficult to setup a ec2 instance than buying a dedicated server."

Is this from experience? If so, please share it.

Sure. I use EC2 to handle our overflow during peak hours. I had to literally look up guides to dealing with it. Its not exactly straight forward how the IP system works, and figuring out all the ec2 specific crap, images and storing the image in S3, etc. etc.

I'm not sure I buy this argument. You had to look up guides for how to set up something you are using because you find it valuable. How is this any different from any other tool you've found valuable and set up? I'm sure that too seemed arcane at first.