doc (?): variables to docker job runners passed differently than doc says wrt to variables to service containers

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I am trying to pass variables into a docker container running a CI job. The documentation is unclear on how to do this.

I have added a deploy key, and added both public and private to ci project variables. In my job, I have a variables section as described here, in the section on passing variables to service containers:

https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/variables/

The job spec for reference is (NB semantic release is configured to use @semantic-release/git, which needs to push assets in current branch, and GL_TOKEN with write access to repo wasn't working on prerelease branch):

deploy:  # deploy using semantic release
  stage: deploy
  needs: ['test', 'lint']
  image: timbru31/node-alpine-git:16
  only:
      # limit to branches / refs
    refs:
    - main
    - alpha
    - beta
    # This matches maintenance branches
    - /^(([0-9]+)\.)?([0-9]+)\.x/
    # This matches pre-releases
    - /^([0-9]+)\.([0-9]+)\.([0-9]+)(?:-([0-9A-Za-z-]+(?:\.[0-9A-Za-z-]+)*))?(?:\+[0-9A-Za-z-]+)?$/ 
  variables:
    SSH_PUBLIC_KEY: $SSH_PUBLIC_KEY
    SSH_PRIVATE_KEY: $SSH_PRIVATE_KEY

  before_script:
    - cp .release/* .release/.releaserc.yaml .
    - yarn install
    - apk --update add openssh-client
    - eval `ssh-agent -s`
    - echo \""$SSH_PUBLIC_KEY"\"
    - echo "${SSH_PRIVATE_KEY}" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null # add ssh key
    - mkdir -p ~/.ssh
    - chmod 700 ~/.ssh
    - echo "$SSH_PUBLIC_KEY" >> ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
    - '[[ -f /.dockerenv ]] && echo -e "Host *\n\tStrictHostKeyChecking no\n\n" > ~/.ssh/config'
    - git config --global user.email "${CI_EMAIL}"
    - git config --global user.name "${CI_USERNAME}"

  script:
    - yarn semantic-release

I would have thought that variables passed like this are communicated in to the container ... and indeed they are, in a way:

It seems counterintuitive that the variable is passed, but isn't substituted for, unlike the doc example for service containers. This could be a bug. Either way the doc on variables should clear up how to pass variables to docker runners.