After doing a Google search for running a Gnome desktop or just desktop (found Xfce4 info...) on a cloud instance, I found some guides at Digital Ocean, for example:
Install and Configure VNC on Ubuntu 20.04LTS
The problem is, that doesn't help me set up a desktop that can run Visual Studio Code or other apps. vscode fails to run, and so does the Atom text editor. They seem to need something like the Gnome Desktop to run, which I can't start using the information in that link. I can't just replace xfce4 with gnome-session
and get it to work.
Am I missing something? I have installed gnome desktop and vnc server.