AWS SQS + SNS + Lambda

You can communicate between ECS containers using SNS.

Based on what little you've said you should consider Simple Queuing Service. If you need to send messages to multiple destinations it can be done with a combination of SNS and SQS.

SQS message can only be read once from the queue and while it's being processed by one consumer it will be invisible to other consumers. If you've got multiple lambdas each will get their share of the messages but one message won't be delivered to more than one lambda at a time.

SQS Messages may be re-inserted into the queue if the processing Lambda fails (if the Lambda is triggered by the queue) or if the message is not deleted within the visibility timeout (if the Lambda is polling the queue).

If you need a single message processed by multiple Lambdas concurrently you can either:

1. fan-out the SQS message to SNS that will have multiple subscribers (e.g. multiple Lambdas, all processing the same message), or
2. use Kinesis stream instead of SQS. Kinesis supports multiple consumers of the same message.

Hope that helps :)