Async functions not being recognized

Solution 1:

Since the documentation, or rather AWS Cloud9's Getting Started isn't kept up-to-date (using an old script to install NVM) and seeing that the project was very old (as per the extended comment section of the question), it surely was the NodeJS version.

This is confirmed by the nvm ls output the OP gave us (I only formatted it):

v6.15.1
-> v17.2.0 system
default -> 6 (-> v6.15.1)
node -> stable (-> v17.2.0) (default)
stable -> 17.2 (-> v17.2.0) (default)
iojs -> N/A (default)
lts/* -> lts/argon (-> N/A) 
lts/argon -> v4.9.1 (-> N/A) 
lts/boron -> v6.17.1 (-> N/A) 
lts/carbon -> v8.17.0 (-> N/A) 
lts/dubnium -> v10.24.1 (-> N/A) 
lts/erbium -> v12.22.9 (-> N/A) 
lts/fermium -> v14.18.3 (-> N/A) 
lts/gallium -> v16.13.2 (-> N/A)

The line default -> 6 (-> v6.15.1) informs us that the default NodeJS version used (for the whole system) is v6.15.1.

Unfortunately, NodeJS does NOT handle async/await syntax natively before v7.6.

You could run nvm install 17.2.0 and then nvm use 17.2.0 (or simply the nvm use part, but I don't know if the v17.2.0 we see in the output have effectively been installed via NVM), which is likely to fix this particular problem.