I don't get these recent anti-Kubernetes posts, yes if you're deploying a simple app then there are alternatives which are easier, but as your app starts to get more complex then suddenly you'll be wishing you had the Kubernetes API.

I'd use Kubernetes even if I was spinning up a single VM and installing k3s on it. It's a universal deployment target.

Spinning up a cluster isn't the easiest thing, but I don't understand how a lot of the complaints around this come from sysadmin-type people who replace Kubernetes with spinning up VMs instead. The main complexity I've found from managing a cluster is the boring sysadmin stuff, PKI, firewall rules, scripts to automate. Kubernetes itself is pretty rock solid. A lot of cluster failure modes still result in your app still working. Etcd can be a pain but if you want you can even replace that with a SQL database for moderate sized clusters if that's more your thing (easier to manage HA control plane then too if you've already got a HA SQL server).

Or yes just use a managed Kubernetes cluster.