On Ubuntu 18.04 - is /var/lib/update-notifier/updates-available related to the update-notifier package?

I am getting a spurious messages about updates available (have recently run apt upgrade) when I log in, I figured out it is coming from the file /var/lib/update-notifier/updates-available which hasn’t been updated months.

Is this file updated by whatever the update-notifier package installs?
I don’t seem to have it installed and there is no /usr/lib/update-notifier directory.

When I go to install it with apt, It tells me that it want to install over 600MB in a ton of dependent packages, so I am a bit wary of doing that it, more because of potential impact on the overall system than the space requirement.

Is update-notifier a standard part of Ubuntu (I installed using an AWS AMI)?
Am thinking I may have removed accidently.

Or if not, is something that is generally desirable to stay on top of available updates?