Right...that period of hyperinflation of analog synths started about 1992, was in full swing everywhere by 1994. Up until then, used synths could be bought for prices that made (and to my reckoning, still do make) sense. But watching things go full-on crazy where prices for a monosynth such as a Pro-One, one of which I bought used in mid-1993 for $80, suddenly and unwarrantedly exploded to something like $750 by the start of 1995...none of this made any sense whatsoever from a purely economic standpoint. But when you encountered a lot of the buzz on the Internet, in print media, and ESPECIALLY through Mark Vail's "Vintage Synthesizers" book where arguments were being pushed that these devices were essential...then it made sense. Or rather, more obvious, yet still utterly senseless.
Anyway, pointing the OP toward effects actually makes more sense. Consider: Brian Eno's "Thursday Afternoon", one of the landmark ambient albums of all time, really has very little going on as far as musical events. What carries the weight in there is actually some elaborately-crafted time-domain processing work. These also offer a wide variety of possible results within an ambient palette, since the real key to that is to craft the imaginary acoustical venue then introduce very basic material into it to 'ring' the 'space' that's been 'composed'. I would even suggest that the OP go with a couple of send/return modules and then inject some stompboxes into the system with those, and then spend less time making the synth noises and more on 'playing' the processing to re-envision what one actually 'performs on' for ambient work. It even works on Pringle's cans...nope, not joking there! A very light 'ping' with a pencil into a properly-filtered reverb at over 45 seconds of T60 will sound quite ambient, indeed!