ORA-20005: object statistics are locked in AWS/RDS environment

While testing the AWS RDS environment, I ran across the issue that the statistics were locked:

begin 
     DBMS_STATS.GATHER_TABLE_STATS 
       (
          ownname => '"DEAN"',
          tabname => '"table name"',
          estimate_percent => 5
       );
end;

The error was:

Error starting at line : 6 in command -
begin 
     DBMS_STATS.GATHER_TABLE_STATS 
       (
          ownname => '"DEAN"',
          tabname => '"table name"',
          estimate_percent => 5
       );
end;
Error report -
ORA-20005: object statistics are locked (stattype = ALL)
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_STATS", line 34707
ORA-06512: at line 2

I checked with

select table_name, stattype_locked from dba_tab_statistics where table_name in ( select table_name from dba_tables where owner = 'DEAN');  

The STATTYPE_LOCKED column contained the value of “ALL”. I was able to unlock this with

exec dbms_stats.unlock_table_stats('DEAN', 'table name');

This changed the value in the STATTYPE_LOCKED to “null” after which I was able to gather statistics.