I am not disagreeing with you that it is easier than deploying your own infrastructure. .. But, again back to my original point, lamda functions are not anything new. They are simply an http app that is "typically" responding to a single route. The API gateway is simply a configured proxy routing the "public" routes to your various "functions".

All the parts are easily replaced or scaled however you see fit. Your function can be in any language that can respond to http on any platform you want. You can put whatever proxy you want in front to define your routes. You can get as simple or complicated as you want.

Serverless is not serverless, you are just abstracted away from it.

[EDIT] I would add that personally I would spin you a cluster of Flynn on Digital Ocean :)