SSH connection refused - M6G instance (ARM) aws linux 2 issue -

We launch an m6g instance from Amazon Linux 2 LTS Arm64 AMI 2.0.20200722.0 arm64 HVM gp2 (ami-0c5bf07e510b75b11). We change /etc/ssh/sshd_config to add below 3 lines to it to change default port etc. We reload ssh service, restart ssh service, even reboot this server and are able to SSH to the server perfectly fine.

Now we take an AMI from the machine ami-xxxxxxx and start a new instance from this ami and instance comes up but SSH connection says connection refused right away. We repeated this ami process on another instance with just port change in sshd_config (and not the other 2 lines) and it still fails. We tried rebooting these servers and console log shows everything is normal but all we get is SSH connection refused right away.

Port 30000
PasswordAuthentication yes
AuthenticationMethods publickey,password

This is not a sec group issue as the source server and target server are in the same sec group and 30000/22 are both open to ssh client ip.

We cannot use the new m6g instances as we cannot customize the server, esp sshd. WE have done 100s of ami's in past and not sure why AMz Lnux 2 with ARM is having this issue and other non-arm instances have no issue.

Anyone have a clue?