AWS Lambda vs EC2: When Each Wins in Panama

Teams in Panama often ask whether to keep using EC2 or to lean into Lambda. The answer depends on compliance, latency, and how quickly you need to ship.

Use Lambda when speed beats control

• Variable traffic: Customer onboarding spikes or seasonal campaigns benefit from automatic scaling without capacity planning.
• Event-heavy flows: File processing with S3, Kinesis analytics, or SNS triggers stays simple with small Lambdas.
• Small teams: Less patching and fewer servers to watch means faster launches.

Use EC2 when control beats convenience

• Long-running workloads: Batch jobs over 15 minutes, specialized video processing, or GPU inference still sit better on EC2.
• Strict networking: Some banks require custom VPC routing, private NAT, or legacy VPN setups that Lambda can complicate.
• Stateful services: If you are maintaining a legacy app while modernizing, EC2 reduces surprises.

A hybrid blueprint that works locally

1. Keep APIs on API Gateway + Lambda for bursty workloads.
2. Run data pipelines on ECS or EC2 with Step Functions orchestrating both serverless and container tasks.
3. Centralize logs and metrics in CloudWatch with account-wide alarms so the ops view is consistent.

Balancing Lambda and EC2 is less about ideology and more about risk tolerance. Define latency budgets, security requirements, and migration timelines up front to keep your architecture honest.