what I figured out much later was that ECS is a thin layer on top of a number of AWS services - they use an AMI that I can use, ec2 VMs that I can run myself and Security Groups + IAMs that I can create by my own.
But the way they have built the ECS layer is very very VERY bad.. and I have an unusually high threshold for documentation pain.
I work on Convox, an open source PaaS. Currently it is AWS only. It sets up a cluster correctly in a few minutes. Then you have a simple API - apps, builds, releases, environment and processes - to work with. Under the hood we deploy to ECS but you don't have to worry about it.
So I do agree that ECS is hard to use but with better tooling it doesn't have to be.
But the way they have built the ECS layer is very very VERY bad.. and I have an unusually high threshold for documentation pain.