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As you hint at in your last sentence, the AUMF is the critical distinction. When the Obama administration dronekilled people it was (at least nominally) attacking allies of the guys who did 9-11, as was explicitly authorised by Congress. Both the GW Bush and Obama administrations claimed (correctly) that citizenship is irrelevant to the US's ability to kill wartime enemies on the battleground, and (probably correctly) that the President had broad discretion under Article 2 and the AUMF to decide who was an enemy and where (except US territory) was a battleground. When the Trump administration dronekills Tren de Aragua drug traffickers, he only has his inherent article 2 authority. In non-lawyer's terms, it is the difference between ordering the military to kill alleged enemies in wartime, and ordering the military to kill alleged enemies in peacetime.
I agree with this, but at least in al-Awlaki's case, there wasn't any allegation that he was on the battlefield, except I suppose in the very broad GWOT context in which the entire world was the battlefield.
It's not clear to me that the AUMF isn't in play, since the Trump administration hasn't released their legal reasoning yet, have they?
Nor is it clear to me that the AUMF is actually a very clear bar on to strikes on narcos. Didn't the AUMF give the President leeway to go after anyone that aided those who assisted in the 9/11 plot (all broadly defined)? It doesn't seem crazy that TdA and the Taliban, for instance, might have done e.g. a drug or arms deal. At which point you could probably invoke the AUMF.
Returning to the Obama administration again, we see that they used the AUMF as their justification for strikes against ISIS. That seems less ridiculous because ISIS and Al-Qaeda and the Taliban all sort of look the same if you squint but is that really the case legally? I'd need to do more digging into the question to have a very strong opinion, but from my admittedly pretty superficial understanding of this all it looks like the AUMF has already been stretched all out of proportion to provide a legal fig leaf for doing whatever the President wants, so I would not be surprised if this is being done again.
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