An IRA is a type of account. Think of it as a box or wrapper, inside which you can own different investments. An IRA provides special tax benefits to investments owned within it, but there can also be tax penalties when money is withdrawn from the IRA "early".

You said that you own variable annuities within your IRAs. Variable annuities are hybrid insurance/investment products which sometimes have fees when you cash out (or "surrender") them early.

So there are two steps to getting cash from your IRAs, both of which will incur taxes or fees:

1. Surrender the variable annuities owned within your IRAs. You may pay surrender fees to do so. After surrendering the annuities, you will be left with cash (dollars) inside of the IRAs.
2. Withdraw those dollars from the IRAs. This will incur income taxes and possibly an "early withdrawal penalty" as well.

If these steps can executed separately, then your best strategy is to surrender one or both of the annuities, but then only withdraw cash from the IRAs as you need it. This will minimize the taxes you pay for removing your money from your IRAs.

As others have mentioned, you are allowed to withdraw your Roth IRA contributions without incurring taxes or penalties. Assuming you need to take money from these accounts, the best order may be:

1. Surrender annuity in Roth IRA, withdraw up to the dollar amount which you have contributed to this Roth IRA (actually any/all Roth IRAs) in the past.
2. Surrender the annuity in the Traditional IRA, then continue withdrawing as needed from the Traditional IRA.
3. Only withdraw "earnings" from your Roth IRA if/when you have completely removed the money in your Traditional IRA.

Can I assume that your IRA is not held at one of our preferred brokerages (Fidelity, Schwab, or Vanguard)? If not, I'd suggest moving whatever IRA funds you don't withdraw to IRAs at one of those providers, and then invest in low-cost index funds in the future: https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/iras/

Good luck!