This likely actually just this bug
It seems that when changing NYPL_CORE_VERSION, the app servers need to be fully restarted - probably because the changed environmental variable isn't detected to clear in-memory hash (e.g. of locations/patron types). Ideally caches are keyed using NYPL_CORE_VERSION so that a change to NYPL_CORE_VERSION necessarily invalidates the previous cache. Theoretically that should allow us to change ENV variables in the EB console without also having to fully restart the app servers.
This is likely due to nypl-core-objects copying process.env.NYPL_CORE_OBJECTS once on start rather than reading it on the fly (and invaliding in-memory cache when it changes)