I, admittedly don't know enough about VPNs. But could I just ssh tunnel to an ec2 instance and browse the web with a sox proxy?
Also, you're still trusting Amazon to play by the rules, which is unlikely if state actors are involved as the comment (which spawned this discussion) insinuated
I had to tunnel dns through openvpn to make dnssec reliable.
On a wifi router, there's loads of leakage; mdns, ntp, things devices do to check for captive portal, weather apps, etc etc.
You can mitm https, but breaks hsts sites, unless you hack your browser