Is there anything else on your playbook ? Perhaps a system reboot after that (in which case /tmp might be emptied) ? What makes you say directory isn’t there ? How did you check ?
Given the elements you provided, I’m also wondering if you are indeed checking on correct machine. Perhaps try to create your directory somewhere else, see how it goes, or move it / rename it after, put something in there then fetching it, etc… (using Ansible) to ensure it’s still there all along your playbook execution.
Maybe run your playbook using ansible-playbook binary instead of running it through AWX, just in case there might be another cleanup process, chained job or else involved in this ?