How to access Elastic Beanstalk env var in springboot application

We have a springboot server running on Elastic Beanstalk. We want to pull env vars into our .properties file. Currently we have something like

vars=${ENV_VAR} <--- in .properties file

and then in the files something like:

@Value("${vars}")

Private string getvars....

Locally this works just fine. When it's on aws, it seems appears it can't find the variables. We have them set in our EB Instance -> Configuration -> Software -> Environment Variables:

Key = ENV_VAR

Value = valueWeExpect

We have "Spring Cloud AWS Autoconfigure" from maven repo as a dependency, but it still doesn't work. Does anyone know if we are missing a dependency or referencing the variables incorrectly.