Consumir Amazon SES en Lumen a utilizando PHPMailer

Amazon_ses.php

<?php
namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Log;

class Amazon_ses extends Model
{
    private $_amazon_ses;

    public function __construct()
    {
        parent::__construct();

        $this->_amazon_ses = array(
            'protocol'  => 'smtp',
            'smtp_host' => 'ssl://email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com',
            'smtp_user' => 'USER', // Reemplazar por el user
            'smtp_pass' => 'PASS', // Reemplazar por el password
            'smtp_port' => 465,
            'mailtype'  => 'html'
        );
    }

    public function send($subject, $message, $to)
    {
        $mail = new \PHPMailer(true);

        try 
        {
            $mail->isSMTP();
            $mail->CharSet = "utf-8";
            $mail->SMTPAuth = true;
            $mail->SMTPSecure = "tls"; // or ssl
            $mail->Host = $this->_amazon_ses['smtp_host'];
            $mail->Port = $this->_amazon_ses['smtp_port']; 
            $mail->Username = $this->_amazon_ses['smtp_user'];
            $mail->Password = $this->_amazon_ses['smtp_pass'];
            $mail->setFrom('contacto@dentalink.cl', 'Comprobante Pago');
            $mail->Subject = $subject;
            $mail->MsgHTML($message);
            $mail->addAddress($to['email'], $to['name']);

            if( ! $mail->send())
            {
                Log::error(__METHOD__ . ' => ' . $mail->ErrorInfo);
                return FALSE;
            }
            Log::info(__METHOD__ . ' => Success');
            return TRUE;
        }
        catch (phpmailerException $e) 
        {
            dd($e);
            return FALSE;
        } 
        catch (Exception $e) 
        {
            dd($e);
            return FALSE;
        }
    }
}

composer.json

{
    "name": "laravel/lumen",
    "description": "The Laravel Lumen Framework.",
    "keywords": ["framework", "laravel", "lumen"],
    "license": "MIT",
    "type": "project",
    "require": {
        "php": ">=5.5.9",
        "laravel/lumen-framework": "5.2.*",
        "vlucas/phpdotenv": "~2.2",
        "aws/aws-sdk-php": "3.*",
        "phpmailer/phpmailer": "~5.2"
    },
    "require-dev": {
        "fzaninotto/faker": "~1.4",
        "phpunit/phpunit": "~4.0"
    },
    "autoload": {
        "psr-4": {
            "App\\": "app/"
        }
    },
    "autoload-dev": {
        "classmap": [
            "tests/",
            "database/"
        ]
    }
}