Why should I use Amazon's cloud services? Could I just launch a site and host it on their servers? Is it easy to use? I'm kind of confused as to how it works.
Sorry for sounding so ignorant, I'm just trying to figure out how I can use it.
Amazon EC2 is like getting a room at a hotel. It may cost more per night, but you can also only book it when you need it. Additionally, when you have more people than expected, you can book more rooms. Renting 10 rooms for a week is cheaper than buying a house.
If you know in advance what your needs are, and they are consistent from month to month, get a dedicated server. If you have have unpredictable needs, EC2 is the way to go.
If you business has any sort of sensitivity to data-origin type legal consideration you're better off with a dedicated server. The country of origin for your data isn't easily controlled with a cloud type service.
With EC2, you can select a region, and you can be assured that the server you get will be in one of a handful of datacenters in that city. There are 4 availability zones in the US-East region, for example, which means that you can be assured that your data is in northern Virginia.
One can use the API to programmaticly trigger the allocation or deallocation of resources in a cost effective manner. In other words when computational needs are low, fewer resources can be allocated and costs can be lowered with additional capacity brought online only as needed - elastic resources to meet elastic demand.