I feel like 20 years is a long time, even in a long-lived species. I'm thinking about trees here, but rot can set in and decay/death of a tree can go from healthy to tumbling much faster than two decades. So, I think we can see that something that lives for centuries can absolutely deteriorate within a few years.
Yoda going from flip-kicking to dead in 20 years is far from impossible, especially if we consider the psychological weight put on him. I've heard stories of people being hale and healthy for decades, then retiring, and kicking it far earlier than expected, medically-speaking, or spouses dying within months or weeks of one another. If a person (even an alien person) gets ground down (as living in exile while the galaxy goes to pot could do) for a couple decades, we could expect their physical health to deteriorate.
But there's more! When I first watched Empire, I assumed Yoda was from Dagobah, but is he native the planet? If not, it seems unlikely that living in that noxious swamp for all that time could be awesome for his health. It's certainly plausible that his condition was worsened by living in a hostile environment.
As to a plot hole, it's a failing within a narrative's established "rules", but since we don't have biological information about Yoda's species, nor what he's been breathing in, etc., etc., I don't think there's a contradiction here. Nothing states this is unlikely. As I said, long-lived organisms can die off in twenty years for sure, especially if we assume that Yoda's species' lifespan is not greater than 900 years (ish), we can also imagine that a deterioration could set in to take him from healthy to unhealthy fairly quickly.
It's less of a plot hole for me because we don't see him as particularly spry in Empire. He's cheeky and mischievous (at least, as a ruse) but he doesn't keep that up forever and he doesn't seem physically impressive. He does hobble around on his cane moreso than in the Prequels. So, for establishing his age, I think it works. For me, that eliminates any potential plot hole.
Finally, and this is a minor point, if there is a plot hole, it isn't with Empire, which came out more than a decade prior to Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. If there is a plot hole, it lies with Episodes II and III, not V.
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