One must use the SAS installer / SAS Admin account. The SAS installer account owns the folders and files belonging to the SAS installation. A normal user generally does not have necessary permissions on the SAS folders/files. Therefore if one tries to update license as an ordinary user, it may not work.
One possible work around could that the users is a member of the Server Administrators group he can.
Normally a sas user does not have this privilege and may not be able to run anything as an administrator.
There could be exceptions but not a general practice.