At that point, I had already been googling for so long that giving up was the best decision. Also, when I said 'ping' I meant 'hit via a web browser' as well as ping on the command line.

Furthermore, I don't feel very comfy when doing 'sysadmin via Google,' who knows what stuff I'm screwing up?

I had never used Digital Ocean before. But getting going with them was the exact same as my previous Linode, Rackspace Cloud, prgmr.com, and every other VPS provider I have tried. I don't need to install special command line tools, or set up security groups, or generate .pems... I ask for a server, they send me an email with a password, I log in, change it, and set up my ssh prefs. Super easy, using the same stuff I use everywhere else.

The big difference between traditional VPS and IaaS services like EC2 (or Google Compute Engine, etc.) is that the latter has dynamic scaling (and a pricing model built around the assumption that you will use dynamic scaling) as a core feature; for traditional VPS-style work on an IaaS, you are likely to end up paying a premium for flexibility you aren't using (and possibly dealing with some attendant management complexity from the same source), but, other than that, IaaS should be a complete substitute for VPS.