Looked up some other posts about this. Said to restart apache after modifying ini.php file. my server host won't restart apache like suggests by other users, because it is a shared server.
Is there a work around?
Unfortunately if you do not have root access to the server then there appears to be no other way to install the GD2 library.
If it really is important to you, you can either make a request to your host to install it or get a VPS/Dedicated/Cloud based server.