You might consider taking a look at Twitter's pex. Python supports importing and running code from zip files. pex aids in bundling python code and its dependencies into an executable zip file.
Unfortunately that's simply not the same. Python libraries many times still require header files to be present, which means on a host you want to install PyOpenSSL you must also install libssl-dev, which means you also much install python-dev... etc etc. Don't get me started on using gevent.
A container is the only sane way to package a python service, but that's not _nearly_ as convenient as a statically compiled binary.
A container is the only sane way to package a python service, but that's not _nearly_ as convenient as a statically compiled binary.