Client.UnsupportedOperation: Instances can only be launched within Amazon VPC in this region

Service: Amazon EC2

Issue: When I attempt to launch an instance by using the CLI or API, I get a "Client.UnsupportedOperation: Instances can only be launched within Amazon VPC in this region" error.

Cause: Your account might not have a VPC.

Recommended Action: Verify that your account has a VPC. If not, create a VPC and then use it to launch instances.

In some cases, your account might have a default VPC. For more information, see Determining if your account has a default VPC. If you still receive this error when you run the ec2-run-instances command (or the RunInstances action) to launch an Amazon EC2 instance, you must specify the subnet parameter. Although the subnet parameter is optional in other regions, if you omit it in the AWS GovCloud (US-West) Region, you receive an error.