That was my experience with Plated as well a couple years ago. I'm sure I'm bias because I don't really mind grocery shopping and I enjoy cooking. That said I didn't enjoy cooking the Plated meals as much as I do one from a recipe I find online. I completely agree on the "Food wasn't hard to prepare, but it was much more cumbersome than most of the things I make in a hurry". I'm not looking for 3 step recipes but a lot of it felt unnecessarily complex for the sake of being complex.
Honestly if you want to up your cooking game by spending money buy a nice recipe app like Paprika (I'm in love with this app) and plan your meals out before you go to the store. It takes me at most 20 minutes to find new or pick existing recipes and make my shopping list for the week. Then a quick trip to the store to grab it all (<30min in store as long as I go alone + 15-20min total driving). Call it just over an hour. Yes I could bill for an hour for more money than I save with groceries vs plated but grocery trips are unavoidable so really we are talking about 20min. And the end result is I make much healthier meals than Plated/Blue Apron/etc and I make what I like.