I encountered a similar problem while running lxc-2.1.1 and lxc-3.1.0 on Debian Stretch:
lxc-start: test: network.c: lxc_network_move_created_netdev_priv: 2438 Failed to move network device "wlan0" to network namespace 1033: Operation not permitted
I’ve tried different kernel and driver versions. Strangely this did not occure on Ubuntu 18.04 or 19.04 so I started compairing installed packages and noticed that iw was not installed in Debian Stretch.
Installing iw fixed the problem for me.