I'll admit that hosting a dedicated virtual server is a good deal more complex than just hosting a website on a shared webserver.
The VPS gets you a main control panel that sets up/controls the virtual hardware .. you can select which operating system to use and when you sign up, you select the number of virtual CPUs, memory and SSD space that's available. The one for WXforum is a Virtual Server L (2 CPU, 2GB RAM, 80GB SSD) and my personal one is a XL (4 CPU, 8GB RAM, 160GB SSD), which is overkill but I've plenty of room to play with extra sites. Neither server is 'stressed'. Both are running CentOS7 OS, Apache, NGINX with configuration controlled by Plesk Obsidian 18.0.27 (a cPanel-like app) that allows configuration of all the websites.
One real advantage to having a VPS, is your tech support call is handled by a unix geek, not a first-call response center reading a script. That, alone, was a major incentive for me to switch to the more complicated hosting.
Yes, you do need to be skilled in server admin tasks (I'd had that from work before retirement), so it's not for folks unwilling to study-up and become proficient in basic server operation (and security concerns). Also, with the VPS, you get one IPV4 address (IPV6 not available), and pay extra $5/mo for Plesk control. For the real unix geeks, you can omit Plesk and just ssh to the server and use the cli to install Ubuntu, CentOS, etc as you like .. the main control panel gives you root access to the virtual iron for pressing 'reboot'.