Neither is infallible. But Amazon probably knows the intricacies of their platform better than Canonical. And they likely run some of their own stuff on these kernels for a while before releasing them to the public.
Old kernel builds don't work particularly well
Don't work as in what? This is the first time I hear about a kernel problem on EC2.
disdain
I don't see where I voiced disdain. I merely responded to the guy who claimed your EC2 kernel is linked to the distro you run. That's simply not true.