Ok...I have spent a good amount of time trying to figure this out. The easiest way to include dependencies for python in lambda functions seems to be a download of the .whl file from pyPI (https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/lambda-python-package-compatible/), unzipping, and including the contents which are compiled on a version on linux compatible with what AWS is running.
Simple question, answer no where to be found. On a WINDOWS machine, how can we uncompress the contents of the .whl for inclusion in a zip file with our python scripts?? I'm desperately looking for a step-by-step but nothing is out there...very frustrated.