Comment 17 for bug 670161

IRobot,
  Your apt-get update error is not related to the image, but is a apt-server error. I've contacted the people in charge of those apt mirrors.

Bob,
  http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/server/maverick/ has ec2-run-instances commands (in the ec2-api-tools package). You may find information at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EC2StartersGuide to be useful.