Yeah, I have no clue how they make software that's so damn inefficient.
Don't even get me started, for example I bought a personal license from Jira (Atlassian) to run on my Linux server. Tiny university project, 5 users (with no one using it most of the time) and the thing ate up all my memory and used half my CPU cores just by idling. That server also hosted Minecraft, which used less resources than that..
Just be careful with AWS, you need a PhD in it to even approximate what hosting will cost you. The company I currently work for is all-in on Azure, which has been working out great so far. It's also much easier to see your monthly cost on there with budget alerts and so on.
Either way, DevOps is extremely expensive. For the money you pay for a single VM in the "cloud" you could get a really nice virtual server from your favorite hosting provider. But if you just want to learn for now, stick with the free offerings (and be very careful with them! Plenty of stories of someone getting a $1000 or even $15000 bill because they messed up along the line).