Hi, I look forward to anyone that can provide an answer to this question. The 2 way interaction between the users and ipython notebook is somewhat limited. The output of each snippet serves more as a "demo" to the current run step in your code.
if you would like to interact with the map, the web app builder may be the more appropriate solution. There is a "measure widget" that comes right out of the box and it takes just a few clicks in a few minutes to get up and running assuming you are running portal or arcgis online.
