Anecdote: after deploying and maintaining applications in Opsworks for a while I feel it's comparatively incredibly hard to do that anywhere else.
The services they offer are great. Remember that you don't have to learn them all at once though. I've worked with amazon services for a couple of years and I still don't know/haven't used most of them. Just use what you need, really.
I do think the page shared here is fantastic though and has changed my attitude somewhat towards AWS.