I am running an EC2 server with Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS. But there are things that do not work properly. CPAN will not install any modules, the MYSQL service will crash, etc.
So, I want to "factory reset" and start all over again.
Is there a way to do this, but keep this instance and its elastic IP address?
Launch a new instance for the same AMI. If you use a flexible IP address, you can attach it to a new instance.