I am taking this as a test project for docker and terraform too...
The Terraform part is on the more "enterprise" side with not only just a public IP on the EC2.

for the docker imaging look at: https://www.fosstechnix.com/how-to-create-docker-image-for-node-js-application/
The docker image can be built with
docker build -t dumbserver .

the image then can be extracted with
docker image save -o dumbserver.image.tar dumbserver

on the target machine it can be imported with
docker image load -i dumbserer.image.tar

and running a container with the image id done via:
docker run -p 1280:1280 dumbserver
(Port 1280 is what it listens on)

At this stage, terraform will create an ssh accessable server (key is in "terraformtest1.ppk") - tutorial used for that: https://medium.com/@hmalgewatta/setting-up-an-aws-ec2-instance-with-ssh-access-using-terraform-c336c812322f

As part of the terraform, I copy a script to install docker/podman - and upload the image
then I set up the container and start it. that's it.