I think root shell is disabled. You can see it in
cat /etc/passwd
if its accessible. Try it and tell me if there is a shell for user root.
Then can you test a
netstat -an | grep 22
To see in which hosts the sshd is listening. If you don't see 127.0.0.1
Try to see if in the /etc/ssh/sshd_config you are using AllowUsers directive it takes precedence to PermitRootLogin.
And just see if this line of your DockerFile is applied in your file:
sed -i 's/PermitRootLogin prohibit-password/PermitRootLogin yes/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config