If you are not hosting for any other customers, why would you need CPanel? Why pay for something (you'll need a licence!) if you only use some of the features (which you don't need to have). You can do some vhost config via SSH (thus over CLI), that's not a real problem and very easy to do. Run each site per user and you are ready to go.
I see that you are running Apache (and a deprecated PHP version) now. Go for Nginx + PHP(5)-FPM and you are all set. I would recommend to go for a setup like that. Nginx consumes less memory and performs better (
http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/apache_vs_nginx) than Apache.
If you want to rent a more powerful machine, go for ESXi and then you can split up services. Like building a dedicated MySQL, Web and mail server. But probably that's a bit too expensive.
I would recommend Debian (or even Ubuntu). Why? Easy to maintain. But CentOS is also very solid but I'm just Debian minded
If you need help I'm here, setting up servers is easy and something I do on a regular basis.