The problem was that my log group was in a different account.
I was able to realize my problem when I attempted to list all log groups beginning with a common prefix, e.g. rather than "my-lambda", I used "my":
aws logs describe-log-groups --log-group-name-prefix /aws/lambda/my
As soon as I realized that no log groups were being listed for a prefix that I expected many log groups, and other prefixes did show some log groups, I realized I needed to use a different account. I leveraged the AWS CLI Profiles to access that account with this usage:
aws logs describe-log-groups --profile prd --log-group-name-prefix /aws/lambda/my
then I saw the many expected log groups, confirming their existence in the right account.
The fix to get the logs I needed should therefore be:
aws logs get-log-events --profile prd --cli-input-json file://cli-get-log-events.json
Unfortunately I get the following error:
An error occurred (ResourceNotFoundException) when calling the GetLogEvents operation: The specified log stream does not exist.
There is a mentionable solution for this error message over at:
AWS Cloudwatch log stream name not recognised
But in my case, I think I just copied the wrong name of the log stream. I grabbed the name of the stream from the console again, pasted it into my cli input file.
My final usage was:
aws logs get-log-events --cli-input-json file://cli-get-log-events.json --profile prd > logs-xyz.json