Correct. It's an alternative to Amazon SES Mail Manager, the paid upsell thing they push. Still uses Amazon SES for sending.
Can't comment on your account issue. Not had an issues myself.
Of course, nice to have alts for sending email, like Cloudron's self-hosted sendmail for smallscale, but email sending is as complex as big-tech wants it to be, so in many cases you have to use them.
The closest to freedom we can have is in having alts for everything. Lots of Alts for Amazon SES, too, but they are all other people's infrastructure.