Cloud9 is better than other AWS products in that you can click through one wizard that sets up your EC2 instance and provisions the Cloud9 software on it at the same time. The AWS interface is still a byzantine nightmare of a labyrinth, but just getting into Cloud9 can be saved with a bookmark once it's set up, and setting it up is just one wizard.
Agreed that it's a higher barrier of entry compared to how simple and slick the c9.io interface was.
