Connect to your EC2 instance using ssh.
ssh -i ec2-user@my_ec2_ip_address

Install following perl packages
sudo yum install -y perl-Switch perl-DateTime perl-Sys-Syslog perl-LWP-Protocol-https

Download the monitoring scripts
curl http://aws-cloudwatch.s3.amazonaws.com/downloads/CloudWatchMonitoringScripts-1.2.1.zip -O

Install the monitoring scripts
unzip CloudWatchMonitoringScripts-1.2.1.zip
rm CloudWatchMonitoringScripts-1.2.1.zip
cd aws-scripts-mon

run the following command to check the memory utilisation.
./mon-get-instance-stats.pl --recent-hours=12

In order to push this data periodically to cloud watch, we need to create an IAM user with relevant permissions, then schedule a cron job to periodically push the data to aws cloud watch.

Create a new IAM user and provide him access to the ec2 instance and cloud watch. Make a note of the aws credentials i.e. access key and secret key. You need this later. Make sure the IAM user has following access.

cloudwatch:PutMetricData
cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics
cloudwatch:ListMetrics
ec2:DescribeTags

For the purpose of the demo, you can provide full access to EC2 and CloudWatch (This is not recommended for production.)

run the following command
cp awscreds.template awscreds.con

open the file  awscreds.conf and enter the key & secret.
The content of the file should look something like this

AWSAccessKeyId=AKAWSACESSKEYSA
AWSSecretKey=z/NOAWSSECRETkeyzt

Run the following command to push the data to cloud watch
./mon-put-instance-data.pl --mem-util --mem-used --mem-avail

Now, configure the cron tab to automate this process at eveny 5 minutes interval.
crontab -e
*/5 * * * * ~/aws-scripts-mon/mon-put-instance-data.pl --mem-util --disk-space-util --disk-path=/ --from-cron

In your aws console, go to cloud watch section, and select Metrics => custom namespaces => Linux System. Select the required metrics.