Python Boto framework is an excellent tool to automate things with Amazon. You have almost everything to automate Amazon EC2 using this comprehensive library.

A quick guide on how to use it in your project

1) Configure your EC2 credentials to be used by your application using one of the followings.

• /etc/boto.cfg - for site-wide settings that all users on this machine will use
• ~/.boto - for user-specific settings
• ~/.aws/credentials - for credentials shared between SDKs 

http://boto.readthedocs.org/en/latest/boto_config_tut.html

2) Refer the API and choose what you need to do.

http://boto.readthedocs.org/en/latest/#currently-supported-services

3) Sample code for a simple autoscaler written using Boto framework. You may reuse the code in your projects quickly. This autoscaler spawn new instances based on the spike pattern of the load.