doing system administration with a Makefile approach

Question

I would like to automatize some sysadmin tasks, such as:

• creating user accounts
• creating folders
• setting permissions
• copying config files
• maybe templating some files if they are too repetitive

I tested three approaches so far:

1. bash scripts: it works, but can be tricky sometimes (not used to the syntax)
2. ansible: I can make it work too, but it really feels overcomplicated for the things I want to do (also, I just HATE writing nested for loops in yaml)
3. Makefile: it is surprisingly convenient to define targets for the various files I want to create, but there are corner cases (such as handling multiline strings, skipping a target if a file is found and not testing permissions)

I searched for a tool that would fit the bill: simple system administration with a makefile approach, but could not find anything. Anyone know of a tool that could do that?