I spun up a Streisand server on a Digital Ocean VM years ago, it worked pretty well. I eventually replaced it with Algo[1] which has also worked nicely.
This was never quite the right model. Too many services increase the surface area of attack. My recommendation for a personal vpn is algo: https://github.com/trailofbits/algo
I generally agree about the surface area of attack, but this project was supposed to be aimed more at censorship circumvention. Algo may help with that, but I doubt it will get past a well funded government agency, e.g. in the Middle East or China.
1: https://trailofbits.github.io/algo/