Thanks for the interesting points made! A coupe of comments about what we perceive some the value of AWS-Console to be:
1. Even if you automate some functions via scripts, it's still nice to be able to see everything presented on a screenful, with reasonable names, and with buttons to "play pointy clicker" to intervene.
2. We're rolling out the ability to control AWS-Console via simple HTTPS requests. Some of the benefits over doing that directly to EC2 will be that things you predefine in AWS-Console can be leveraged by the scripts.
3. We're currently testing the ability to define application deployments. In other words similar to capistrano. The big benefit comes when you can have monitoring trigger deployment events for you. Unfortunately we're not quite there yet.
4. The big benefit of a 24x7 service comes in when it monitors your deployment and can trigger deployment actions automatically. We're getting close...
If you have specific use-cases we would very much appreciate if you could contact us directly at sales@aws-consolel.com (or email me directly). We are definitely adding features based on user-demand.
Thorsten