Most JupyterHub systems are configured to wipe all directories except for /home/jovyan every time your server shuts down. This is by design to keep file systems from bloating and to allow your computing environment to be run on different physical machines. /home/jovyan should be kept small, with just your text files, github repositories with code, and perhaps a small amount of data. If the default JupyterHub conda environment is missing packages you can either update the environment each time (run conda install mypackage in a terminal) or you can install entirely custom conda environment as explained below.
1. Open a terminal in your Jupyterlab session. You’ll see that the (notebook) environment is activated by default:
(notebook) jovyan@jupyter-scottyhq:~$ conda info -e
# conda environments:
#
base /srv/conda
notebook * /srv/conda/envs/notebook