This is kind of some rambling observations and a plea for help, since right now I'm feeling pretty dumb. I know I'm missing something quite obvious and have no idea what. Spent about 3 hours off and on trying to get things going (between shots of rum at the end).
So to start off I am by no means a Linux expert, so this is most likely user error.

I saw a machine for rent at less than 10 cents an hour with 2 1060s, so figured I'd at least give it the benefit of the doubt. If anything I could learn a thing or two. For the record I'm talking about this.
Apparently they use Docker images, so I figured I'd throw this NVIDIA-savvy one on there.

Right off this was new to me. Apparently the home directory is simply the contents of the boinc folder. There was no remote_hosts.cfg, which already had me wondering what was going on, so I created one. Edited the gui_rpc_auth file, while I was at it, then restarted boinc with the only command I know.
/etc/init.d/boinc-client restart which seemed to work.
Something to note here is that I did not need sudo for any of the commands - I had to install Nano and curl in order to grab the public IP address and actually edit anything.
What a disappointment when I tried to connect remotely and failed. I figured they had a firewall, and since I was so lost anyway I decided to just throw a Ubuntu docker image on it instead. The boinc docker was far too confusing simply because I didn't know where to input the commands starting with docker run -d \. They allow you to use ssh or pass the arguments directly onto docker, and I figured SSH was what I wanted. Maybe not?

So - get Ubuntu docker image (I think 1804) up and running, Install Boinc. This looks much more familiar. Edit /etc/boinc-client/gui_rpc_auth.cfg and /etc/default/boinc-client so Boinc would start allowing remote access and I had the right password. Still no go. I figured fine, let's try, just for giggles, port 80. I was of course restarting using the command I gave above with each change.
So, by the end of it I had this in the Boinc-client:
BOINC_OPTS="--allow_remote_gui_rpc --gui_rpc_port 80"
Still nothing.
Even more odd is when I'm actually in the /etc/boinc-client directory, typing Boinccmd --get_state gave me no output. I tried typing Boinc on its own and it seemed to start the actual manager (I thought I had restarted it earlier). But I was getting all of the output about ram, don't do work while gpu is suspended, etc. Still no go on connecting with ports 80, 8080, 43 or the port that I was given to SSH in with, not that I thought that would do much good. I didn't actually catch if it even picked up on the gpu since there was so much info flying by, but I digress.

Am I having a blond moment here or is this really going to be that impossible to connect to? Am I even editing the right files? I'm able to connect to it through ssh and it's able to make http connections to get its own public IP, so it has to be me. I just have no clue where I'm screwing up. Unless it really is Blocking all Boinc connections and is a lost cause.

Any help appreciated here.
I'm going to press the return key to send this, then have another drink.