Why did you plan to move to AWS? If you just want a fixed set of virtualized servers, they are neither the easiest nor the cheapest option. What's the pain with Linode/DO you are trying to fix?
We wanted to use a platform that could implement things like PCI, HIPAA & similar compliance issue we may run into. To be honest, as our startup is getting bigger, we just wanted to start going with a "big boy" solution. Don't have an IT team yet, but after talking to a few potential IT folks, it seemed like AWS was the gold standard.