First thoughts.

Deployment should focus on non-cloud deployments as a first class citizen.

Cloud is 100x more expensive on bandwidth and it is much easier to make a non-cloud product work in the cloud then make a cloud product work outside of the cloud.

I'd suggest moving to k3s and testing deployments on raspberry pis or one of the x64 based SBCs.

Or maybe work on deployments to vpses.

Making it easy with cloud should still also be a primary goal, just avoid making it hard to reduce costs by moving to rented dedicated servers or rented vpses. Some communities will need the 99% reduction.