EMR Steps that should takes seconds are taking minutes

Question

I am running a number of very very simple steps on my EMR Cluster. One such step is creating an hbase table like such:

step.json

{
    "Name": "Create table command",
    "Type": "CUSTOM_JAR",
    "ActionOnFailure": "CONTINUE",
    "Jar": "command-runner.jar",
    "Args":
    [
        "bash",
        "-c",
        "echo create \\'myTable\\', \\'a\\' > create_table.txt; hbase shell -n create_table.txt;"
    ]
}

and the command should take about 0.5s to execute but the step is running for longer than 18min right now. The command has executed though. I see in the stdout logfile that it happened:

stdout

Created table factuserdatastep-echo
Took 4.8382 seconds
Hbase::Table - factuserdatastep-echo

And I can verify in the shell that everything is as intended. But the steps just won't terminate. The controller is stuck on this:

controller

...
INFO ProcessRunner started child process 26901
2021-12-14T15:05:45.305Z INFO HadoopJarStepRunner.Runner: startRun() called for s-34LXK66Z Child Pid: 26901
INFO Synchronously wait child process to complete : hadoop jar /var/lib/aws/emr/step-runner/hadoop-...

I am not sure what is taking so long does anyone have an idea why the step won't terminate?