* route/transform messages from one message queue to another
* process email bounces
* sign up/unsubscribe/verify email subscribers
It is can be a hassle to host that kind of service on an EC2 instance; try to lowball the size of your server and you might find the $5 a month server got overwhelmed, started swapping, and ran up your EBS bill by $200 a month.
Lambda functions are scalable down to very light workloads and also to very high workloads. That's important because large services often have obscure functions that run occasionally, or small services sometimes get a crazy high workload.
In those cases Lambda has your back.
It'll probably require a rewrite at the millions of users level, but it works for now.