Making Ambient to feel like Workbench is very difficult. It is like trying to get Ferrari feel like Lada 1200.
I would say Ferrari vs Mini to be more fair. (Or did you mean Ferrari for OS4 Workbench

barebones but fast and expensive... )
Also on A1200 I used DirWork and TinyMeter. Never liked DOpus 5 or the AmiStart menu on AROS for that matter.