And "simple" is not the same as "easy". K8s is a classic example of complexity arising from simple system, as there are pretty much two major algorithm ideas in the whole thing (blackboard multi agent system and OODA loop controllers).
k8s is a the centre of a lot of transformational stories, where companies that couldn't do things like CI/CD have been helped making the leap, because it pretty much forces you to do IaC and makes it hard to screw up.
It's harder than clicking on the GUI, starting a VM, ssh'ing to a box and running a process, but is it harder than doing the same with terraform on AWS?