Hosted Zone's relations with zone files

In Amazon Route 53, a hosted zone and a zone file are related but distinct concepts.

A hosted zone is a container for DNS records that specify how you want to route traffic for a specific domain (like example.com) and its subdomains. When you create a hosted zone in Route 53, it serves as the management unit for your domain's DNS configuration. There are two types of hosted zones:

1. Public hosted zones - contain records that specify how to route traffic on the internet
2. Private hosted zones - contain records that specify how to route traffic within Amazon VPCs

When you create a hosted zone in Route 53, the service automatically assigns four name servers to that zone and creates default SOA (Start of Authority) and NS (Name Server) records. These name servers are managed by AWS to ensure reliability and performance of your DNS configuration.

While a traditional zone file is a text file that contains DNS records in a specific format, Route 53 abstracts this implementation detail away. Instead of directly editing zone files, you work with the hosted zone through the Route 53 console or API, creating and managing records within it.

So conceptually, a hosted zone is more like a container or management interface for what would traditionally be represented as a zone file, plus the associated name servers that serve those records. The hosted zone includes both the collection of DNS records for your domain and the infrastructure (name servers) needed to make those records available.

When you register a domain with Route 53 or transfer DNS service to Route 53, you need to ensure that your domain's registration points to the name servers assigned to your hosted zone for DNS resolution to work properly.
Sources
Working with hosted zones - Amazon Route 53
Working with public hosted zones - Amazon Route 53
CreateHostedZone - Amazon Route 53