The problem is that the leadership principles are sufficiently vague and contradictory, so like any good religious text, they can be used to justify anything by picking and choosing something that supports whatever it is you were going to do anyway.
Want to take action? "Bias for action". Want to sit on a decision? "Dive deep". Want to cut costs? "Frugality". Want to invest more? "Think big".
I agree, from my own time at Amazon, that leadership principles are baked into performance evaluations and promotion. The problem is that, rather than looking at the leadership principles to guide future actions, people take whatever it is they did over the past six months and stick leadership principle labels on those.