Assuming you or HPCloud already worked out DNS' PTR issue and a puppet master host is setup, you can use the following user-data to bootstrap an Ubuntu server instance:

#cloud-config
 
puppet:
 conf:
   agent:
     server: "PUPPET-MASTER-FQDN"
 
   puppetd:
     listen: true
 
   # /var/lib/puppet/ssl/ca/ca_crt.pem on the puppetmaster host.
   ca_cert: |
     -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
     PUT-CERT-HERE
     -----END CERTIFICATE-----
 
runcmd:
  - |-
    echo "path /run
    method save
    allow PUPPET-MASTER-FQDN" >> /etc/puppet/auth.conf
  - |-
    echo "[puppetrunner]
    allow PUPPET-MASTER-FQDN" >> /etc/puppet/namespaceauth.conf

Note: Make sure that the cloud-config user-data is a valid YAML file, go here to check.

To run a server instance with a User-Data, setup euca2ools CLI, then run:

euca-run-instances ami-000015cb -t standard.xsmall -g Web -k hpcloud -f user-data.txt 

All you need to do after is sign the certificate request at the puppet master host and do a puppetrun:

puppetca --list
puppetca --sign PUPPET-CLIENT-FQDN
puppetrun PUPPET-CLIENT-FQDN

If you goes well, you should be able to administer every aspect of an Ubuntu server instance from the puppet master host with manifest files.