Hey LQ,

I've got an Amazon EC2 instance and so far I haven't been able to use the service at all as I can't find a web editing tool that can log into the server and edit files in the /var/www directories.

Amazon EC2 instances appear to require .pem files for authorizations and I have never heard of any web editing tool that can use these for logins. Have you?

I'm actually dumbfounded that this is the only way to log into the system, how do they expect people who use web editing tools to modify their websites? I know I could have a local lamp system and then I could SCP the files over or something but that's incredibly old school and slow and cumbersome.

Really frustrated... Any ideas? Please let me know.

The "pem" file is a container for public private pairs (see pk/pki for a detailed explanation of how that works).
Basically, you need an SSL connection to access the EC2 server and that requires a certificate.
Refer to the Amazon documentation SSL installation page for further instructions