It’s not the cheapest but I use a DigitalOcean instance to do what you are describing. I’ve been burned by VPS hosts and I’ve enjoyed the complete lack of drama or downtime with DigitalOcean.
For port forwarding I’m using Private Internet Access and gluetun. I don’t really recommend Private Internet Access and, like you, I’m interested in a better solution. It’d be nice if I could use ProtonVPN’s port forwarding but it looks like that only works if you use their app.