ansible template's chown part fails on ubuntu server 14.04 but works on ubuntu desktop trusty

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i have something like this:

  • name: Setup client IP in Proxy Balancer
    become: yes
    template:
    src: templates/proxy_balancer.conf
    dest: ./new_proxy_balancer
    owner: root
    group: root
    mode: 0644
    tags: hello

this works great on ubuntu desktop 14.04 but the same file fails on chown part on ubuntu desktop. i’ve tried everything w.r.t. sudo and become, etc. the playbook works only when run with sudo. Ansible (2.3.0) and python (2.7.6)

What am i missing?
Thanks in advance for any tips or suggestions.