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One micro instance with Postfix is more than enough and can beat this setup not only in performance but in simplicity.

What a year to be alive ...

In cost? Running postfix.org mail sever on a VM must have a nonzero cost, with the additional need to maintain the underlying OS.

EC2 micro instances are free.

but are often blacklisted as SMTP sources, unfortunately.

Not really, only if it the IP was used to delivery spam.

But IP reputation can be established with a bit of warm up and human interaction.