Using AppCompatActivity in a Flutter plugin

I am trying to write a plugin to connect Flutter to a 3rd party native library which requires AppCompatActivity, however, Flutter seems to either not like it or I am doing something wrong, which given I know almost nothing about native code is quite possible.

I am getting the following error:

(18394): java.lang.IllegalStateException: System services not available to Activities before onCreate()
(18394):    at android.app.Activity.getSystemService(Activity.java:7052)
(18394):    at android.view.LayoutInflater.from(LayoutInflater.java:288)
(18394):    at androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatDelegateImpl.installViewFactory(AppCompatDelegateImpl.java:1585)
(18394):    at androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity.onCreate(AppCompatActivity.java:113)

After searching around it seems at least part of the resolution may lie in adding this snippet to my AndroidManifest.xml

        <activity
                android:name="com.tap.plugin_wizzitdigital"
                android:theme="@style/AppTheme"
                android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden|keyboard|screenSize|locale|layoutDirection|fontScale|screenLayout|density|uiMode"
                android:hardwareAccelerated="true"
                android:windowSoftInputMode="adjustResize"
        />

I also tried swapping out for Flutters own FlutterActivity which did not work as specific methods from AppCompatActivity are being called by the native package.

I am guessing there is a way to get this working, at least I hope so, but my GoogleFu is failing me in this case.