I need to set up an amazon server. I always here “setup ubuntu on amazon ec2” which sounds simple enough in theory, but what are all these other things!
The main question is "sure I can google ec2 setup, but are these other web services offerings any better suited for me than ec2"
there are so many that it is a bit overwhelming. I need to run a server that I can code on and process data with, is an ec2 instance what I need or is it something else? if this is too vague then at least paste some resources here to point me in the right direction
thank you for any insight

You need EC2 – just go to the EC2 Getting Started guide in the AWS documentation and it will walk you through what you need to do.