sadly that only amazon linux v2 support systemd. Amazon linux v1.0 does not https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-2/

I was running into the same issue trying to run systemctl from within the Amazon Linux 2 docker image

Dockerfile:

FROM amazonlinux:latest

# update and install httpd 2.4.53, php 7.4.28 with php extensions
RUN yum update -y; yum clean all
RUN yum install -y httpd amazon-linux-extras
RUN amazon-linux-extras enable php7.4
RUN yum clean metadata
RUN yum install -y php php-{pear,cli,cgi,common,curl,mbstring,gd,mysqlnd,gettext,bcmath,json,xml,fpm,intl,zip}

# update website files
WORKDIR /var/www/html
COPY phpinfo.php /var/www/html
RUN chown -R apache:apache /var/www
CMD ["/usr/sbin/httpd","-DFOREGROUND"]

EXPOSE 80
EXPOSE 443

$ docker build -t azl1 $ docker run -d -p 8080:80 --name azl1_web azl1

pointing a browser to the IP:8080/phpinfo.php brought up the normal phpinfo page as expected pointing to a successful php 7.4.28 installation.