referencing the instance id of an EC2 resource just created in Ansible - amazon-ec2

Question

I am having a difficult time referencing the instance id of an EC2 resource that I have just created. After I create it, I would immediately like to terminate it. My code is below:
Thank you,
Bill
---
- name: Example of provisioning servers
hosts: 127.0.0.1
connection: local
tasks:
- name: set_fact1
set_fact: foo = 1
- name: Create security group
local_action:
module: ec2_group
name: ep2
description: Access to the Episode2 servers
region: us-east-1
rules:
- proto: tcp
from_port: 22
to_port: 22
cidr_ip: 0.0.0.0/0
- name: Launch instances
local_action:
module: ec2
instance_tags:
Name: server1
Env: myenv
region: us-east-1
keypair: ansiblekeypair
group: ep2
instance_type: m1.small
image: ami-1aae3a0c
count: 1
wait: yes
register: ec2
- name: Terminate instances that were previously launched
ec2:
state: absent
region: us-east-1
instance_ids: "{{ ec2.instance_id[0] }}"
with_items: ec2

Answer 1

You need to reference ec2.instances[0].id.
It is useful to use - debug: var=ec2 task or run playbook with -vv switch to see detailed values of registered variables and check what properties are available for use.

Answer 2

If you want to terminate the instances just launched (assuming that their tags are specific) you could also use the exact_count facility:
exact_count: 0
count_tag:
- Name: server1
- Env: myenv
As per the doc (highlights are mine):
exact_count
An integer value which indicates how many instances that match the count_tag parameter should be running. Instances are either created or terminated based on this value.
and count_tag:
Used with exact_count to determine how many nodes based on a specific tag criteria should be running. [...]
It would give something like:
- name: Terminate instances
local_action:
module: ec2
instance_tags:
Name: server1
Env: myenv
region: us-east-1
keypair: ansiblekeypair
exact_count: 0
count_tag:
- Name: server1
- Env: myenv
wait: yes