Practice makes perfect. Have you tried going to things on meetup? It's sort of expected to meet strangers on there so it's a great environment to meet new people.
I just got an AWS cert myself (Solutions Architect Associate) and while I don't have any experience with other certs, I do feel like studying for it helped me get a better understanding of what AWS services were available and how to better design systems using the AWS services. There weren't really any "memorization" questions, the questions were more scenario based - like a customer wants to do X, which one of these services/configurations would make the most sense given their needs for high durability/reliability/cost saving/whatever.
Are certifications a perfect way to judge someone's competence? definitely not, but at least in the case of that certificate I think it'd be hard to pass the exam without having at least some decent knowledge of which AWS services are the best to use in different business situations.