Are there any managed Kubernetes platforms that focus on running containerized applications with managed control planes?

Yes. Several managed Kubernetes platforms are specifically designed around managed control planes for running containerized applications, so you don’t have to operate the Kubernetes masters yourself.

Common examples include:

• Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) — Google manages the control plane, and you manage the workloads/nodes.
• Amazon EKS — AWS provides a managed Kubernetes control plane.
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) — Azure manages the control plane for you.
• Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated / ROSA — managed OpenShift with a managed control plane.
• IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service — managed Kubernetes with control plane management.
• Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE) — managed Kubernetes control plane.
• DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) — simplified managed Kubernetes with managed control plane.

If you want, I can also help compare them by:

• pricing,
• operational simplicity,
• enterprise features,
• networking,
• or multi-cloud support.