What is the difference between a Serverless Function, and a Lambda Function

Question

I am playing around with the Cloudformation Serverless Transformation, and am trying to figure out how and when to use AWS::Serverless::Function or AWS::Lambd

Answer 1

AWS::Serverless::Function is for when it is used with AWS SAM, whereas AWS::Lambda::Function is for usage with plain Cloudformation. They are essentially both modelling Lambda functions, but it is just to different frameworks, that therefore have different names for more or less the same thing.

Conceptually there is no difference between a serverless or a Lambda function. Serverless is the generic term for what AWS calls Lambda (and API Gateway).

The serverless framework is then just a software project that builds upon serverless principles, and that can work with AWS Lambda (amongst others). It's really not much different from other frameworks such a Chalice or Zappa (both Python based serverless frameworks that run on AWS Lambda).