The Amazon system includes a global LD_PRELOAD library that 'sanitizes' the environment to what they think is required.
You can find it using the LD_DEBUG environment variable settings on the kTerm execution command (just like you are setting DISPLAY).
Of course, that isn't triggered by command line commands, only by loading an executable.
We never have found a good reason to remove it, so we never have.
It is most likely one of the security features to prevent "environment variable attacks" - but you have to be jail broken before you can remove it from the system.
