I'm trying to install scipy on a bare-bones Django app running on Amazon Elastic Beanstalk, but I can't get it to work.

Here are the steps to reproduce my problem:

The regular stuff from the guide:

# Create a new virtual environment
mkvirtualenv -p python2.7 django_eb

# Install Django on it
pip install django==1.9.12
# pip freeze should now show Django==1.9.12 and some other things

# Start a new Django project 
# This creates a directory that has everything you need for Django
django-admin startproject django_eb
cd django_eb

# Optionally check that the site works
python manage.py runserver
Ctrl-C

# Store the pip requirements so that the remote host can install them
pip freeze > requirements.txt

# Tell the remote server where our wsgi file is
mkdir .ebextensions
cat <<EOT >> .ebextensions/django.config
option_settings:
  aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:python:
    WSGIPath: django_eb/wsgi.py
EOT

# Allow any host for our project
# If this is unset, you'll get a 404 on the deployed site
set ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['*'] in settings.py

# Create an EB project
# Will need AWS EB CLI for this
eb init -p python2.7 django_eb
# Choose some region
eb init
# choose Y so we can SSH and check logs

# Create a deployment environment
eb create django-eb-env 
# This step takes around 5 minutes
# If it fails and you need to restart run 'eb deploy'

# Open the website in your OS's default browser
eb open
# If you get DisallowedHost at / error
# double check that ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['*']

Installing scipy:

# Now we'll install scipy and watch how it doesn't work remotely
pip install scipy==0.19.0
pip freeze > requirements.txt
eb deploy
# Should take forever and then finally print 
# 'ERROR: Failed to deploy application.'

eb ssh
cat /var/log/eb-activity.log
# Should print
# numpy.distutils.system_info.NotFoundError: no lapack/blas resources found

# After reading this blog post
# https://medium.com/@DaveJMcKeown/deploying-scipy-into-aws-elastic-beanstalk-2e5e481155de
# I added this to .ebextensions/django.config:
packages:  
  yum:
    make: []
    gcc-c++: []
    gcc-gfortran: []
    python27-devel: [] # I used python27-devel instead of python-devel
    atlas-sse3-devel: []
    lapack-devel: []
    libpng-devel: []
    freetype-devel: []
    zlib-devel: []
container_commands:  
  AddGlobalWSGIGroupAccess: 
    command: "if ! grep -q 'WSGIApplicationGroup %{GLOBAL}' ../wsgi.conf ; then echo 'WSGIApplicationGroup %{GLOBAL}' >> ../wsgi.conf; fi;"

# Unfortunately, this leads to an our of memory error
# Running dmesg now looks like the following:
# http://stackoverflow.com/a/35011967/2770572

I'm at a loss here. It seems like I could maybe get this to work on an EC2 instance with more RAM, but I can't really do that because it'll take me out of the free tier. Is there a way to run the make command so that it doesn't take up so much memory or some other solution?