AWS: Quick and secure LAMP on Amazon Linux
This is pretty cut and dry. If you want the more verbose version, head over to AWS: Building a LAMP instance on Amazon Linux.
Start an Amazon Linux instance (I default to 64 bit), and be sure the security group allows access over ports 22 and 80.
Now you can connect with ssh, using your key and the username you configured. Use MySQL Workbench’s Standard TCP/IP over SSH connection type to tunnel to MySQL over SSH.
You will likely also want to create a key on this server and install a version control system so that you can pull code directly from your version control (you are using version control, right?!?).
I use mostly git these days, so:
Copy the public key to your version control service, and you’re good to go.