You can run iex -S mix to run iex with the dependencies in your current mix project included.. You can read about this at http://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/mix-otp/introduction-to-mix.html
From there you can execute Ecto queries:
iex> MyApp.Repo.all(MyApp.User)
Running iex -S mix phx.server will also start the phoenix server.