When formatting durations using the NumberFormatter::DURATION type, you may also need to use NumberFormatter::setTextAttribute to get the desired output.
<?php
$fmt = new NumberFormatter('en', NumberFormatter::DURATION);
var_dump($fmt->format(12345));
$fmt->setTextAttribute(NumberFormatter::DEFAULT_RULESET, "%in-numerals");
var_dump($fmt->format(12345));
$fmt->setTextAttribute(NumberFormatter::DEFAULT_RULESET, "%with-words");
var_dump($fmt->format(12345));
$fmt2 = new NumberFormatter('fr', NumberFormatter::DURATION);
var_dump($fmt2->format(12345));
?>
This is a little counter-intuitive because there is not much doc available about the DURATION type.
Also, as far as I can tell, only the English (en) locale has support for the "%in-numerals" & "%with-words" rulesets. Other locales seem to simply format the input as if the DECIMAL type had been used (at least using "fr" or "de" as the target locale).
One way to provide that feature across different locales is to extract the ruleset implicitely used by NumberFormatter::DURATION and adapt it for the locales you're targetting. Use NumberFormatter::getPattern to extract the ruleset.