This error is related to the fact that you MUST abide by the platform requirements listed in the asdf Erlang extension page.
Personally, I'm using MATE on Ubuntu 18.10 - Cosmic Cuttlefish. To satisfy the asdf runtime requirements for Ubuntu, I needed to install the following Check the Erlang extension page for your specific platform's requirements:
sudo apt-get install libwxbase3.0-0v5 \
libwxbase3.0-dev \
libwxgtk3.0-0v5 \
libwxgtk3.0-dev \
libwxgtk3.0-gtk3-0v5 \
libwxgtk3.0-gtk3-dev \
wx3.0-doc \
wx3.0-examples \
wx3.0-headers \
wx3.0-i18n \
wx-common \
libwxgtk-webview3.0-gtk3-0v5 \
libwxgtk-webview3.0-gtk3-dev \
libwxgtk-media3.0-0v5 \
libwxgtk-media3.0-dev \
libwxgtk-media3.0-gtk3-0v5 \
libwxgtk-media3.0-gtk3-dev
Once you have satisfied the platform requirements, you can safely go ahead and re-process the asdf Erlang installation successfully with the following syntax:
asdf install erlang <version>
If after completing the installation the documentation has still not been installed, check this StackOverflow answer for assistance with this