The issue manifests under these conditions:

Build host/distro:  Ubuntu 18.04   (can reproduce in chroot env).

Ubuntu 18.04 does ship with icu60 . 
YP kirkstone does ship icu-70.1 , thus newer than build host.

To reproduce on a Ubuntu 18.04 host or chroot:

Install minimal YP dependencies as per doc site.

Clone YP kirkstone and add meta-oe to the layers for nodejs.

Run devshell for a package that has nodejs / npm in depends .

Call npm or nodejs --help .

user@legolas:~/build-html5/tmp/work/corei7-64-agl-linux/html5-mixer/1.0+gitAUTOINC+38587cf96c-r0/git# node --help
Usage: node [options] [ script.js ] [arguments]
       node inspect [options] [ script.js | host:port ] [arguments]Options:
node:internal/main/print_help:130
      return StringPrototypeLocaleCompare(name1, name2);
             ^RangeError: Internal error. Icu error.
    at String.localeCompare (<anonymous>)
    at node:internal/main/print_help:130:14
    at Array.sort (<anonymous>)
    at format (node:internal/main/print_help:121:25)
    at print (node:internal/main/print_help:214:23)
    at node:internal/main/print_help:231:1
root@legolas:~/AGL/master/build-html5/tmp/work/corei7-64-agl-linux/html5-mixer/1.0+gitAUTOINC+38587cf96c-r0/git# 


There is an ICU error. Digging deeper reveals, that node will look for the icu's .dat file (which we did disable). 

Enabling the .dat generation led to the issue #15301 .