If you go to Help > Launch Classic Notebook and try running the things you say aren’t working, do they work in the classic notebook interface? And if by chance it works there, do you absolutely need it to work in Jupyter Lab? I ask because there is still some flux going on with extensions and JupyterLab. And I don’t know what instructions or documentation you are following, but it looks like you are dealing with installing extensions in the classic notebook interface.
Normally, I’d point you to the Binder example that includes the widgets extension installed and enabled for JupyterLab to give you an idea of how to get it working. But even there, at the present time it isn’t building right with version 2.2 of JupyterLab, as discussed here and here. (For the record, normally I’d suggest you go here and press the launch binder badge next to the text ‘(Jupyter Lab)’. Then when you saw it was working you could try applying the commands in postBuild dealing with extensions and JupyterLab to your situation.)
I don’t have any additional information of that sort for ipyturtle. However, it is probably similar where you are better off at this time trying it in the classic interface first.
Although I don’t suspect that is the issue, you raise the issue of your install being current; however, your version of JupyterLab isn’t totally current. 2.2 has been available a while now. It looks like from here if you installed recently using conda you should see 2.2.9. Did you use a recent version of Ubuntu when you set up the AMI on your EC2 instance?