iOS app that needs a dockerized server

I am running into absurd difficulties in trying to do a fairly simple thing — run an iOS app. As with almost any other app, this one needs to access its server (to log in users et cetera). This server is the cause of all my trouble since it requires docker.

We also have an Android app. For this app, life is good. On a Ubuntu machine executor I docker compose up the server, and the app can access it on localhost. The problem is that docker is not supported on the macOS executor.

As a workaround, I painstakingly installed everything needed to run the server on the macOS virtual machine, only for the VM to get flushed down the drain once the pipeline is finished.

I am thinking about deploying the server on AWS or a similar PaaS in the preceding step. However, it seems like an overkill for such a trivial task.

Did anyone run into such a problem? What did you do?