My first thought was related to colocation services. From what I understand, a lot of people avoid on-premise/in-house solutions because they don't want to deal with server rooms, redundant power, redundant networks, etc.
So people go to the cloud and pay horrendous prices there.
Why not take a middle path? Build your own custom server with your perferred hardware and put in a colocation
However, one of the most important differences is the lack of unrelated web services related components that pose a major distraction/headache to users that don't have a DevOps background (which AWS obviously caters to). AWS can be incredibly complicated. Simple tasks are encumbered by a whole host of unrelated options/capabilities and the learning curve is very steep. A platform that is specifically designed to serve the scientific computing audience can be much more streamlined and user-friendly for this audience.
Disclosure: I work on Paperspace.
Lambda A100s - $1.10 / hr Paperspace A100s - $3.09 / hr Genesis A100s - no A100s but their 3090 (1/2 the speed of 100) is - $1.30 / hr for half the speed