Note: This isn’t an answer specific to dnd-5e but, instead, explains why the maps for the older adventures updated by Tales from the Yawning Portal have those really long corridors. In other words, playing an adventure that uses old school maps means diving into old school mechanics.
Long corridors informed the light management minigame
Originally written in 1980 for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan—like many early adventures and adventures that followed in their footsteps—includes long, seemingly pointless corridors with neither creatures, features, nor traps. Such corridors may have been to keep encounters separate, but early adventures often expected the DM to reinforce one section's opposition with the opposition from another section. (And, having recently run The Keep on the Borderlands (1981), I can vouch for this. Yeesh. Freakin’ goblins.)
The reason I suspect such long corridors exist is these earlier games' emphasis on light management—and, to a lesser degree, encumbrance—that's largely fallen out of favor with many contemporary players. (The osr folks, torchbearer players, and similar folks excepted, of course.)
To give you an idea of how things used to work, the Player's Handbook (1978) for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons on Movement in the Dungeon says, "The movement distance in the dungeon is 1" to 10' over a turn of 10 minutes duration while exploration and mapping are in progress" (102).
To break down what that means real quick: movement in AD&D is tracked in game inches of 10 ft., so 1" to 10' over the course of 10 minutes is a speed of anywhere from 10 ft. to 120 ft., with 30 to 40 ft. for the slowest adventurer (one toting over 105 lbs. of armor, weapons, and—importantly—torches).
So if the adventurers are mapping (and they are mapping because adventurers that don't map only don't map once) then the adventurers may be moving through the dungeon at about 3 to 12 feet per minute! Therefore adventurers were expected to travel those long hallways of 10-ft. squares at the rate of 3 to 12 per 10 minutes. (Also, unlike exploration movement, moving through areas that have already been mapped, movement in combat, and fleeing from danger were all done at a much faster pace!)
Then the Player's Handbook says that a torch is exhausted after 6 turns (60 minutes or around 180 to 720 ft.) and a pint of lantern oil after 24 turns (4 hours or about 720 to 2,880 ft.). And if their light goes out—for whatever reason—adventurers either spark up again or soldier on in the dark.
"Light management? But I have darkvision!"
Not so fast. The light management minigame largely predates darkvision—the O-so-convenient, usually-black-and-white-but-otherwise-crystal-clear see-in-the-dark-sans-light method possessed by many modern PCs. Instead, old school PCs of appropriate races possess infravision that only sees heat signatures. (Infravision also provokes fist fights about Science! at the gaming table—a reason for the change from infravision to darkvision in some later editions). And infravision is fouled by heat—like from a torch or lit lantern—, so navigating by it isn't an option unless the party's entirely dwarves, gnomes, and the like. And good luck mapping using infravision exclusively! Infravision's terrible for detail work: all you're seeing is reddish blobs and blurs.
Unusually, the Player's Handbook helpfully offers up some trivia for those still cocky about having 60-ft. infravision: "Dungeon-dwelling monsters have infravision to 120 [ft.]" (ibid.). So in the dark the monsters will always spot the PCs down these long corridors before the PCs spot the monsters, it's often useful to see for reals during combat, and if the lights do go out It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Then there's all your gear…
The glacial pace of dungeon exploration is exacerbated by the encumbrance system: a torch weighs about 2.5 lbs., a lantern about 6 lbs., and a full flask of oil about 2 lbs.! (All weights approximate, converted from their equivalents in gold pieces which AD&D uses to determine an item's bulk and weight). An adventurer carrying more than about 35 lbs. is encumbered and slowed, and an adventurer carrying more than about 105 lbs. is you in I don't have to outrun the monsters; I only have to outrun you.
(What old school PCs really hankered for was a magic weapon that shed light so they could largely dispense with torches, lanterns, and flasks of oil, but adventurers first had to find such magic weapons somehow, and that probably meant playing the light management minigame for at least a little while… or far longer with a less generous DM!)
…And there're wandering monsters, too!
The Dungeon Master's Guide (1978) on Time in the Dungeon says, "It is essential that an accurate time record be kept so that the DM can determine when to check for wandering monsters…" (38), and Gygax isn't kidding. Adventures usually had wandering monster tables that had the DM sic foes on the adventurers while the adventurers were busy ever so slowly mapping those too-long corridors. The DMG's own example of play, for instance, has the DM checking for wandering monsters every 3 turns with wandering monsters appearing on a 1 in 6!
Putting it all together
All three of these elements—light management, encumbrance, and wandering monsters—coalesce into an ordeal that can leave inexperienced players' PCs stranded in one of those extended, featureless hallways—in the dark, turned around and befuddled, their light sources exhausted—and then attacked by wandering monsters! Dungeons are scary. It's dangerous to go at all.
Playstyles change
Like I said, the light management minigame isn't that big of a deal now—I mean, even late-cycle dnd-3.5e published adventures, for instance, largely dispensed with the light management minigame to emphasize instead encounters in individual rooms wherein PCs could battle their foes and take their stuff—, but, back in the day, the light management minigame—how many torches folks had, who had the lantern, where the next flask of oil was coming from, what would happen when all these supplies inevitably ran out—was Serious Business.
And in The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan that light management minigame was incredibly Serious Business.
About The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan specifically
Originally designed for tournament play using the three pregenerated PCs in the back of the adventure, Tamoachan relies mightily on these specific tournament PCs carefully managing their light sources. Altogether, the tournament PCs have but two torches, one tinderbox, one flask of oil (that "ignites only on a 1 in 6"), and one light spell (and additional light spells are unavailable as substitutions for other spells—because tournament that's why). (This is no spoiler. Everything's there, spelled out on the handouts.)
More about light in the original Tamoachan in the spoilers below.
Before venturing into the dungeon, enterprising tournament PCs can—if they really want to—spend some precious, precious tournament time "making crude torches which will burn for 1-4 turns" (3). Pro Tip: Do this and take as many as you can carry!
But wait! There's more!
The dungeon's first room—the Vault of Chicomoztoc—screws with the tournament PCs' light source, causing "a flame to illuminate a 10 ft. radius dimly, as if in a dense fog" (4), when normally a torch illuminates a 40-ft. radius! So, y'know, just in case the PCs get the (ahem) bright idea to, like, look around after the cut scene in which they fall into the room, they can totally waste one of their two torches right there at the entrance.
And, finally, about those wandering monsters:
Wandering monsters weren't used when Tamoachan was run at conventions. The element of randomness added by wandering monsters meant one group of players could have a totally different and far more difficult dungeon crawl than another group, making judging performance difficult. But, when retooled for home use Tamoachan of course included a wandering monster table. Players at home would be disappointed if there weren't wandering monsters, right? The chance of an encounter? 1 in 12. Checked each turn.
Looking at Tamoachan's original maps (on which the game has based its Yawning Portal "Tamoachan" maps), it's possible for the tournament PCs to exhaust their light sources as early as the dungeon's Lower Chambers, thereafter becoming reliant on the dungeon to supply light and being unable to map (and likely lost) in the interim. Without carefully managing light sources, the tournament PCs' map will be in disarray, and but one carefully mapped lengthy corridor—and there are several lengthy corridors in Tamoachan—can deplete the entirety of the tournament PCs' light sources!
A contemporary party that ventures into Tamoachan in the standard dungeoneering fashion—with all their gear and their fancy light sources—will likely find the adventure's endlessly long corridors pretty darn boring, but when the adventure was published and used with the tournament PCs, those absurdly long corridors were a risk that demanded careful light management lest the tournament PCs become the dungeon's latest victims.
Note: Thanks to Joel Bishop for bringing to my attention how I'd misfigured originally the AD&D movement rates. Even I was suspicious of 1 ft. per minute!
