Disabling gl in the command line gets it to boot, as in:
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2G -device virtio-gpu -display sdl -netdev user,id=ethernet.0,hostfwd=tcp::10022-:22 -device rtl8139,netdev=ethernet.0 ubuntu-touch-mainline-generic-amd64.img
However the latest version is hanging at boot with starting VPN (VPN? LOL!).