Which AWS load balancer will meet these requirements and take the LEAST amount of effort to deploy?

Explanations:

The Network Load Balancer operates at the transport layer (Layer 4) and is best for handling TCP and UDP traffic. It does not support path-based routing, which is required in this scenario.

The Application Load Balancer operates at the application layer (Layer 7) and supports path-based routing. This makes it ideal for distributing requests to different EC2 instances based on URL paths with minimal setup effort.

AWS OpsWorks Load Balancer is not a specific load balancing service but a feature within AWS OpsWorks for managing application stacks. It does not directly support path-based routing.

A custom load balancer on EC2 would require significant setup and management overhead to configure path-based routing, making it more complex and less efficient than using an Application Load Balancer.