Honestly, its a much easier setup on your own box. You have the option of a GUI, and I've found installing a linux distro on my own box to be much easier than figuring out EC2.
I'm not sure where a GUI comes in handy here - it's not like there's any good GUI (in the traditional sense) tools for fiddling with webserver config.
Even were I to want one on a webserver on the localhost I'd probably just install webmin or something, which you can do equally well on a VM somewhere else.
If you're not already comfortable with the command line, Ubuntu's package manager GUI is a hell of a lot more intuitive than apt-get. After that, a simple text editor is easier to work with than nano, emacs, vim, etc. for changing config files.
That said, I wouldn't use a GUI for such things, but I would still prefer my own box. The big power button is a lot easier than EC2s endless menus and options. I say this from the perspective of someone who's used EC2 for a couple of project - imagine someone who's never seen it before.
