For me, my problem was I was setting the name servers in the hosted zone, and not under the registered domain tab.

I used this guide to find the right place to set the name servers:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/domain-name-servers-glue-records.html

After this I was able to use Digital Ocean DNS.

Hello Brad,

you can keep your nameservers and let NS records point to AWS IPs/domains and then create A record point at your Droplet IP.

If you’d like to use DO nameservers, you can change your NS records to:
ns1.digitalocean.com
ns2.digitalocean.com
ns3.digitalocean.com

and create domain record (equivalent to A record) in DO control panel under “DNS” menu option on left after you log in.

EDIT: Here’s some more on this topic - https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-host-name-with-digitalocean

When you set nameservers for a subdomain it is being delegated (aka handed over) to them. So making A record changes in AWS will not make any difference.

Assuming your domain is example.com and subdomain is do1.example.com you have two options here:

Option 1:

In your AWS console create the following A record

Name: do1.example.com
Type: A - IPv4 Address
Value: IP.address.of.droplet

Option 2:

Create 3 NS records in AWS:

Name: do1.example.com
Type: NS - Name Server
Value:
ns1.digitalocean.com
ns2.digitalocean.com
ns3.digitalocean.com

Login to your DigitalOcean account, open the DNS section, click Add Domain and fill in the details:

Name: do1.example.com
IP Address: IP.address.of.droplet

@jesin I’m in the same boat as the original poster and had went with option 1 thinking this would be easy. The A record works, I got to blog.sitename.com and the wordpress-droplet loads, but in my url bar the dns entry changes to the actual IP address. I’ve since edited my apache2/sites-enabled and ensured I had the site ServerName in place. I’ve also created domain records on the GUI… Thoughts?

Just came across this and followed Option A - I know this is an old post, but wanted to add that it took about 5 minutes for AWS to “catch up” and redirect traffic. I believe this was due to my “Time To Live” parameter of 300 seconds which was set in Route 53 for the rule I used. Basically, the old (AWS) IP address was cached and after the 300 seconds had passed, my new (DO) IP address was added.