I'll be happy to help you learn how to install and configure ejabberd (IMO the best XMPP offering that I've tried so far).  I only have experience installing it on Debian, which Ubuntu is based off of, so if you went the route of an Ubuntu VPS we should be good to go.  Because ejabberd is written in Erlang, installation from scratch might be a bit tricky, so I would first need to bring myself up to speed if you did go a different route.

As for Electrum, as far as I know it's all GUI.  It's unusual to want to run GUI programs on a VPS, since VPSes are usually used just as servers.  This leads to the question, are you planning to run a remote desktop environment on the VPS?  If so, then by all means, you shouldn't have any trouble setting up Electrum (it's actually simple enough with the provided executable bundle that I'll walk you through for free as a trial).  And if you need help getting the GUI stuff working on a remote Ubuntu system, I'll teach you about vncserver, which dishes up a virtual desktop environment with no local display hardware needed at all.

I've been a Linux programmer, sysadmin, and tinkerer for over 10 years.  My experience with ejabberd isn't in a professional capacity; I simply run a personal XMPP server for my own domain.  I've got it operating with IPv4 and IPv6.  Through my ejabberd instance, I have access to chat with users on AIM, Yahoo, and IRC via XMPP transports, which are adapters to other chat networks--other XMPP transports for other networks are also available.  Therefore, I'd love to communicate over XMPP (my ejabberd server hardly gets any use!), and I'm also available to chat via IRC or telephone--whichever works best at the moment.

I'll be sending you a private message shortly about my rates and scheduling.