You can't boot an android device from an SD card.

If you want to factory reset an android device the way to do it is to boot into recovery mode (which involves booting while pressing some combination of buttons - which combination depends on the device/manufacturer), from where you can select factory reset from the menu. However, that will not undo changes to system software, it just erases user-installed apps and data.

However it's not clear what you mean when you say "with software installed on it", since any Androd device has software installed on it. If you just mean that there is some app installed which you can't uninstall then a reset will do that, though if you can access the system menus there should be other ways. If however the system software has been modified you will need to do something different to change that: again, procedures and tools are device/manufacturer-specific, but in general it involves putting the device into fastboot or download mode and using a computer to flash the software. I've never heard of Amiko so have no information about how you flash their devices.

If your software is an image you might be able to boot into it temporarily using the "fastboot boot" command from a computer (with the software image also on the computer), but not all devices support "fastboot boot" (if yours does you need to install fastboot on a computer, connect the device via USB and boot it into fastboot mode). But that's only temporary.

I'm afraid that the bottom line is that more information about what you are trying to do and the software you are trying to install might help, because there are a lot of possibilities here.