Claiming that your code is a 'lambda function' makes it sound sexy, but.. isn't it really just a procedure? Unless I'm missing something and there is some higher-ordered capability for composing AWS lambda functions together in a way that permits the platform to perform lambda reductions or optimize resource allocation...
Lambda function, not lambda function. Capitalization is key (the former is just a brand name).
Having reductions and composition would be really cool, but from what I could glean from the demos each function is containerized. Stateless and idempotent like lambda functions, but right now chaining more than one together requires an intermediary event.
Except that it can have side effects, can't it - it can trigger services, cause stuff to be changed in a datastore. It doesn't have any local stateful storage, but it can make use of remote state. In that respect, how is it different from basically any web request processor?