> nothing like durable objects (with containers no less) really exists in other clouds

fwiw, celld is seeing a rush of building around it:

https://celld.dev/

https://tlockney.github.io/celld-book/

https://noite.now/ https://github.com/kentcdodds/kody-celld

https://celld-operator.io/ https://ewhauser.github.io/celld-operator/