When starting lxterminal with the '-l' argument to get a login shell, it executes '/bin/sh -l'. On most systems /bin/sh is a minimalist shell that is not the default shell most users use (typically /bin/bash) as specified in /etc/passwd and set by chsh.
This has the surprising consequences of 'lxterminal -l' giving you different and less featured shell to 'lxterminal'.
Note that '-l' also only applies to the first tab, not subsequent tabs, so your first tab is a login /bin/sh, and tabs opened after that are non-login /bin/bash shells.
Current git version now properly selects the user shell and makes it a login shell. This fix will be included in the next release.