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

[pras...@entrib.com]

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.