EC2 Auto Scaling now offers an instance lifecycle policy that lets you retain instances when termination hooks fail or time out. This feature allows for custom actions during instance wait states and gives you more control over graceful shutdowns, which is useful for stateful applications.

AWS Organizations has introduced a new account state field to provide more granular tracking of account lifecycles, enhancing management capabilities for AWS accounts. This change aims to improve clarity around account readiness and closure processes, transitioning to the new field while phasing out the existing status field by September 2026. Users are encouraged to update their automated workflows to utilize the new account state information.