I want an EC2 Ubuntu 16.04 AMI to use as an affordable cloud based Linux machine to play with toys, like teaching myself Haskell. Take lappy for coffee, get internet on the phone. Do Haskell exercises. Go home. Continue exercises on desktop. (I can run Linux virtual guests on both the Mac and Windows machine.) 

Unfortunately, it looks like using the image is a sysadmin challenge, not least because if you want a GUI, you have to get it working on your own. I'm way down the sysadmin learning curve, compounded by the fact that I usually don't enjoy system administration chores. 

Has anyone got some useful thoughts?

Trent