If you are comfortable with Apache, it's difficult to advise going with Nginx, but with a small node like that, you would probably be better off memory wise with Nginx.
For pricetack.com, I currently use Ubuntu 10.04 + Nginx (uWSGI) + Postgres on RacksSpace Cloud 512mb ( I don't have much traffic yet). I have created Fabric scripts which are quite similar to the setup scripts. If you plan to do this long term, you should definitely consider Fabric now or at some point. It makes things a lot easier. I don't use any of that other software. I currently use "root" which I'm not sure is a good idea. I see everyone suggesting "virtualenv" which I currently do not use. I have a 2nd node that I use for QA. At some point I envision that I will have separate DB and web servers. Then multiple web servers. Then multiple DB servers. But that's down the road.
