If you want to run multiple applications, how about ... just running them? It sounds like you already do that, so what is the real problem that you are trying to solve?
If it's annoying to start them by hand one by one, you could use Foreman or Overmind to start them with a single command, and interleave their output in a terminal.
Option A: learn k8s, use it for anything containerized. Don't use the complicated parts if you don't need them.
Option B: learn docker (docker compose I guess?), use that... then also learn k8s because you'll eventually have to anyway
ECS, while vendor locked and less extensible, is actually pretty solid to work with.
a) use HTTPS when developing services b) give each service a unique hostname c) run all my services on the same port
and there's simply no easy way to do that that I know of. Hence my Ask HN :)
I think the parent comment is referring to this one: https://github.com/DarthSim/overmind