EC2 Mandatory Scheduled Reboot Instructions Are Confusing

This afternoon, 30% of our instances got a never-before-seen "stopwatch" icon in the web UI. This indicates that the instance must undergo scheduled maintenance. We see a new tab with details and deadlines.

Our first mandatory reboot is due in a little over ten hours.

We have yet to receive any email from Amazon notifying us of the existence of this new "feature".

edit: An EC2 user pastebinned a copy of an email from Amazon support that provides additional detail regarding what must happen for each type of reboot: system-reboot and instance-reboot.

http://pastebin.com/VzNQDG37

edit: To be fair, Amazon does mention the impending new features in the official blog back in mid-November, saying that the new status items will describe "action[s] that we must take on your instance". http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/11/ec2-instance-status-monit...