So, I was around back then and am around now as a principal and this comment doesn't really pass the reality sniff test.
Its a lot worse than this in terms of AWS cost for apps that often barely any people use. They're often incorrectly provisioned and the AWS bill ends up in the hundreds of thousands or millions and could have been a few thousand in bare metal on Hetzner with a competent sysadmnin team. No, its not harder to administer bare metal. No, its not less reliable. No, its not substantially harder to scale for most companies to do bare metal(large fortune 50 excluded).
I've been seeling a cost-reduction service for a while, and the hardest aspect of selling it is that so many people on the tech side doesn't care because they don't seem to be held to account to the drain they cause.
I can go in and guarantee that my fees are capped at a few months worth of their savings, and still it's a hard sell with a lot of teams who are perfectly happy to keep burning cash.
And I'll note, as much as I love to get people off AWS, most of the times people can massively reduce their bill just by using AWS properly as well, so even if bare metal was bad for their specific circumstances they're still figuratively setting fire to piles of cash.