When renewing, certbot uses the previously used options provided on the command line from a renewal configuration file. That configuration file would already have "apache" as authenticator (and possibly installer) set. Setting it again on the command line is just superfluous, redundant, not necessary. It is only useful when a certificate was previously issued with another authenticator and you wish to override that. If the certificate has always been using the apache authenticator, there is nothing to override, so again superfluous setting.
And as it's a redundant, superfluous setting, it wouldn't help you with cut off Apache connections. As far as I know, certbot shouldn't cut off any connection. I thought it does graceful restarts, but I'm not 100 % sure about that. In any case, using --apache doesn't help.