Why does Shell Script to create database via mysql work in terminal but not with exec, passthru, or shell_exec?

Question

I have the following basic shell script here:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# run as root
if [ "`id -u`" -ne 0 ]; then
 exec sudo "$0" "$@"
 exit 99
fi

# dbname mandatory
if [ -z ${1+x} ]; then
  exit 1;
fi

set -a
source /path/to/vars.env

dbhost=${dbhost:=localhost}

dbname="$1"

mysql --defaults-extra-file=$dbcnf_path<<EOF
CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS $dbname;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON $dbname.* TO '$dbuser'@'$dbhost';
ALTER DATABASE $dbname CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
EOF

echo "Database $dbname was processed."

I have a vars.env file that just sets the dbcnf_path (full directory path to a config.cnf file), dbuser, and dbhost variable values.

The config.cnf file looks like this:

[client]
user = "user"
password = "mypassword"
host = "localhost"

I have edited /etc/sudoers file to allow this .sh file to even run as root (in case that is a problem, which shouldn't be I don't think cause it just accessing mysql).

The php code that executes this (I have tried all ways: passthru, shell_exec, and finally exec none of them create the database) is as follows:

<?php 
    $dbName = 'dbNameTest';
    $cmd = './mysql_test.sh ' . $dbName;
    $data = exec($cmd, $output);
?>

Not sure why the database will not be created. Any ideas how this might need to be changed in order to work via php with exec, shell_exec, or even passthru? I'm not sure why it's not working, seems a bit odd unless that was intentional to not allow apache to update the database via php in a shell script. I've just recently updated bash to the newest version and mysql is running version 8.x.x if that helps.