Is it actually a lot easier? By what metric?

I'm assuming when you say "host your own servers" you mean actual hardware, right? So getting the hardware, setting it up, hooking it up, reliably, to power and the internet, physically securing it, maintaining hardware, that's "a lot easier" than using a couple EC2 instances across availability zones?

Yes. You can either learn and use a locked in, vender specific service, or you can learn and use the same tools they use.

In a lot of orgs, you are allowed to use AWS but only "IT" can host their own servers, and they are hard to deal with. This I also a major rarely spoken factor for the success of AWS.

LOL