Lambda Return Payload botocore.response.StreamingBody object prints but then empty in variable

The following code solves the problem. Apparently I need to set the streamingbody to a variable, then read it into another variable. I used this link for reference

def invoke_lambda(payload):
    r = lambda_client.invoke(
        FunctionName='MyLambdaFunction',
        InvocationType='RequestResponse',
        Payload=bytes(payload)
    )
    t = r['Payload']
    j = t.read()
    print j

If you expect JSON as response, you can do the following:

import json

def invoke_lambda(payload):
    response = lambda_client.invoke(
        FunctionName='MyLambdaFunction',
        InvocationType='RequestResponse',
        Payload=bytes(payload)
    )  

    response_payload = json.loads(invoke_response['Payload'].read().decode("utf-8"))

    print ("response_payload: {}".format(response_payload))