The way I develop panel applications in vs code is to add the following command in my launch.json. This enable to use the native vs code debug tools. I think it is more elegant than what is mentioned on awesome-panel, but I could be wrong 
{ "name": "Python: Panel", "type": "python", "request": "launch", "module": "panel", "args": [ "serve", "${file}", ], }
You’re absolutely right. It is now straightforward to debug with VS Code. It has changed and the guide should change