Honestly, I didn't use one. I thought I was going to need a book or two to get started, but all I did was sign up for EC2, launch a Micro Instance with the Amazon Linux 32bit Image (eligible for the free tier), downloaded the keys, and ssh'd in. The only hitch I ran into was you have to log in as ec2-user, not root, with the keypair. After that, it was smooth sailing. Micro instances uses EBS for boot and local storage, so I think they persist after termination. Anyone is free to chime in and correct me, but I think the larger instances have 'local storage' that is purged on reboot in addition to EBS.

My only advice would be to fire one up, and try it out. Either its gotten a lot easier, or I've gotten a lot smarter. The former is far more likely. :)