AWS instances resolve S3 endpoints to a public IP. If the elasticsearch instances reside in a private subnet in an AWS VPC then all traffic to S3 will go through that VPC’s NAT instance. If your VPC’s NAT instance is a smaller instance size (e.g. a t1.micro) or is handling a high volume of network traffic your bandwidth to S3 may be limited by that NAT instance’s networking bandwidth limitations.

Instances residing in a public subnet in an AWS VPC will connect to S3 via the VPC’s internet gateway and not be bandwidth limited by the VPC’s NAT instance.