Python management

[Slim]

I've been getting more active in doing python web application development.
TLDR version:
I'm looking for an updated environment. My questions is how best to do that.
1) Ask FutureQuest to update; add packages, perhaps update Python.
2) Ask FutureQuest to open up pip for use as --user.
3) Some form of environment (venv, virtualenv, pyenv) which might require 4)
4) Install pip in my own environment to run as --user
5) Install my own python interpreter and pip, maintain packages, etc. on my own.

Longer version:
There's a number of things I want to do. I want to move my code all over to Python 3; While I was writing python2.7 for work, it made sense to work with python2. That isn't true any more.

But there aren't all the same modules loaded on Python3. My first example is PIL, but it's not likely to be the last.

Pip is not available, so I can't do the simplest form of pulling them all over on my own.

There are a lot of new methods for maintaining a users own environment (or environments) for different applications. Different applications can have different module version requirements, so there are (at the farthest out solution) container based solutions like Docker or LXC/LXD, but there are also less extreme solutions coming from virtualenv that allow a use to maintain different environments to use with different groups of modules, without a different container, or even a different interpreter.

But in general they depend on pip. There are instructions for pulling pip into your own account, but with some warning about when you are using a python install managed by your operating system.

I'd like to (and am working on) setting up an environment on my development machines which matches the environment I'm using on FutureQuest, so that I can develop and test with lower need to do all the testing on FutureQuest.

On a similar tack, but which I'll probably take up on a different message, I want to set up Apache instances that are as close as possible to those on FutureQuest, so that I can test that as well. In general, I want to be able to set up installation processes on my development machines that can be parallel to what I do on FutureQuest, so that when I'm ready to go to production, it's a practices exercise of the existing install processes to move it over quickly and painlessly.

Any advice on which way I should go?