We study Cox rings of normal threefolds on which SL2 acts with a dense orbit. Exploiting the method of U-invariants, we obtain combinatorial criteria for the total coordinate space and the base variety to have log terminal singularities. Then, we investigate the iteration of Cox rings and obtain a bound on its length. Finally, we develop a general approach to the description of the Cox ring by generators and relations which is effective for normal SL2 /µn-embeddings.