For asynchronous Lambda invocations , AWS provides built-in failure handling options that require minimal code and minimal operational work. When an async invocation fails (after Lambda’s internal retry behavior), the event can be sent to a dead-letter queue (DLQ) so it is not lost. A DLQ is the standard mechanism for capturing events that could not be processed successfully, preserving the original payload for later inspection and reprocessing.

Using a DLQ (typically Amazon SQS or Amazon SNS ) gives durable storage of failed events and decouples failure recovery from the main execution path. The developer can later re-drive the messages by building a simple replay process, such as moving messages from the DLQ back to the original event source or invoking the function again with the stored payloads. This aligns with the requirement: “store messages that resulted in failed invocations so the application can retry later.”

Among the options, C is the only one that uses Lambda’s native async failure capture mechanism. Options A and B introduce unnecessary complexity and do not reliably store the original failed invocation payloads as a first-class workflow (CloudWatch Logs is not a message queue, and EventBridge→SNS doesn’t automatically capture only failed events from Lambda async invocations). Option D changes the architecture to an SQS pull model for the Lambda function; while valid, it is more than needed and adds design/operational considerations (polling, batching, visibility timeouts, DLQ configuration on the queue, etc.) compared with simply enabling DLQ support for async invokes.

Therefore, the least operational overhead solution is C : configure a dead-letter queue for the Lambda function’s asynchronous invocations so failed events are stored for later retry.