Stars and gas, galaxies, galaxy clusters, filaments, etc. interact with each other in very complicated ways via gravity and electromagnetism (and other forces we don't understand yet, like dark matter and dark energy). Is this enough complexity to create and support "life"? Intelligent life? We're considering organisms the size of (and constructed out of) superclusters of galaxies, living on the timescale of billions of years. Such life may not have had time to evolve yet.
Imagine the observed web of galaxy walls and filaments as the endoplasmic reticulum of a biological "cell" in our part of the cosmos.
The general idea is that the requirements for simple life are actually very low: some pull forces, some push forces, some mixing, just enough complexity, and with enough time, then life, though perhaps not life as we know it, will spring up.
This is vaguely like the Gaia hypothesis, that the planet Earth is a single living organism, applied to the universe.
Cosmic expansion might put a damper on things.
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