AWS Lambda NoClassDefFoundError

I am having difficulty with a Java based Lambda function setup to receive messages from SNS. My function looks like the below:

package com.mycompany;

import com.amazonaws.services.lambda.runtime.Context;
import com.amazonaws.services.lambda.runtime.LambdaLogger;
import com.amazonaws.services.lambda.runtime.events.SNSEvent;

public class LambdaHandler {  
    public void Handler(SNSEvent event, Context context) {
        //Process the event
    }
}

It compiles just fine and I don't have any problems uploading the jar file to Lambda (via the web console).

However, when I publish to it (via SNS through to the subscribed Lambda function) with JSON representing the SNSEvent model, the Lambda function throws the following exception:

Error loading method handler on class com.mycompany.LambdaHandler: class java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/amazonaws/services/lambda/runtime/events/SNSEvent at

java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods0(Native Method) at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredMethods(Class.java:2701) at java.lang.Class.privateGetPublicMethods(Class.java:2902) at java.lang.Class.getMethods(Class.java:1615) Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.amazonaws.services.lambda.runtime.events.SNSEvent at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:381) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:424) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:357)

I use Maven + Netbeans and it's a Maven Java Application project. I downloaded the function from the Lambda console and confirmed, the jar has a lib/ directory with all of the jar's for the imports, including aws-lambda-java-events-1.1.0.jar, which itself includes the /com/amazonaws/services/lambda/runtime/events/SNSEvent.class file.

Why is the runtime unable to find the class when it's definitely in the jar file? Is there anything else I need to do, set any environment variables, etc?

Any help would be appreciated!