Yes i am able to ssh into new ubuntu install, but what command can i use to transfer files into root instead of sftp? i tried scp root@ip/root but it didnt work

If you are using the WordPress one-click image the default web root is /var/www/html so to transfer a file to that location you would use scp my_file.zip root@ip_address:/var/www/html/. The : between the IP address and the file path is important.

do i need to manually instead phpmyadmin in the new ubuntu installed?

By default we do not include phpmyadmin on our WordPress one-click. You can import your database (assuming a .sql file) by doing the following.

If you’re using the WordPress one-click there will already be a populated database. You’ll need to empty it before importing your backup. Once you’ve done that either by dropping and re-creating the wordpress database (and updating permissions) or by dropping all the tables in the database you can use this command to import your backup:

mysql -uroot -p wordpress < backup.sql