Web Deployment for Undergraduates

Issue: I am teaching a web development course (MERN stack) and do not have a deployment set up. I would like to use Jetstream2 because they offer instances with IP addresses. I have enough allocations for 20 students to each have their own instance. I was able to build a MERN stack and deploy a static react site, but the backend MongoDB piece, while connected, did not serve up data. I cannot figure out why. Helpdesk at Jetstream suggest trying a docker container, which makes sense but obviously if I can’t get it working one way I’ll need help.