I've done some AEV'ing to my gladiator. All from lucky FB marketplace finds, the most recent being the EX bumper that someone sold for $500 (not sure why they listed it so low, to be fair).
I think the benefit of the AEV 2" lift is that you are able to keep the Mojave shocks which I think you would want to keep as they are the remote reservoir FOX shocks without having to invest in something similar (but longer) for a lift.