Yeah, the "proper" way to do Lambdas, shown in so many fancy architecture diagrams, is a rat's nest. I don't like APIs on Lambda unless you can shove them into one container with a catchall proxy on API Gateway. They really shine if you're processing SQS messages or EventBridge events. If you aren't using other AWS services and aren't cost engineering, then Lambdas probably aren't worth the headache.

The serverless framework makes lambda for side projects a breeze.

CDK for everything else.