Cloud wasn't sold as a performance thing. It's more about outsourcing the maintenance (let AWS replace a dead PSU at 4AM) or for the promise of scaling tasks to infinity for dynamic demand (web hosting).

You might see interest in thin-client plays for the same reason. They'd like to replace the local desktop with throwaway $50 terminals because it's easier to deploy on a standardized VM image and not have to replace dead SSDs and CPU fans.

Workstation tasks that require low-latency and high performance seem to stay local because the performance is simply not there.