Async Controller Play 2.3
Let's assume the following enclosing context for your method, this gives us types to work with (types are very important in scala). Notice I changed back from CorsAction to Action since that shouldn't change anything to the types and I don't have the implementation for CorsAction at hand. Also your code doesn't give enough context to know which execution context you have in scope.  

import play.api.cache.Cache
import play.api.mvc.{Action, Controller}

import scala.concurrent.Future
import scala.util.{Try, Success, Failure}

trait ResponseService{
  def create(key:String, channel:String):Try[String]
}

class Temp(responseService:ResponseService) extends Controller  {
  def submitResponse(qkey:String) = Action.async(parse.json){ req =&gt;
    ???
  }
}


I assume you have tests for your code so I can start refactoring right away. The first thing is not going through a thread to produce a future for which we know the result and since we have imports we can use short names: 

if(!currentQuestionKey.equals(qkey)){
  scala.concurrent.Future{BadRequest("Inactive or Invalid Key")}
}


should really be 

if(!currentQuestionKey.equals(qkey)){
  Future.successful(BadRequest("Inactive or Invalid Key"))
}


the Future.apply will execute asynchronously in a different thread capturing exceptions as needed, here that would mean a useless context switch to assign a static value which can not throw exceptions.

The same more or less holds true for 

val futureResponse = scala.concurrent.Future {
  responseService.create(qkey,channel)
}
futureResponse.map{response =&gt;
  response match {
    case Failure(x) =&gt; { BadRequest("Duplicate " + qkey)}
    case Success(storedResponse) =&gt; { Ok(storedResponse)}
  }
}


Because of the pattern matching which is below  the Future instantiation, it seems that the return type of responseService.create is a Try[T].  

futureResponse currently has a Future[Try[T]] type which encodes redondant information (see below). The futureResponse.map call can be simplified as : 

futureResponse.map{
  case Failure(x) =&gt; BadRequest("Duplicate " + qkey)
  case Success(storedResponse) =&gt; Ok(storedResponse)
}


which eliminates a bit of boilerplate. By the way, curly braces are unneeded around case expression's bodies since there is no "fall through" to the next case once a case has been matched.

Try[T] will catch the same exceptions which would be caught by Future (NonFatal exceptions) therefore I will assume that the responseService.create is a very long operation. If it is not the case, then using an asynchronous controller makes no sense. If it is indeed the case and you control the signature of responseService.create, I suggest having it return a Future[T] instead of a Try[T].

Assuming you can't change the signature of responseService.create, there is still a  change (debatable) that can be made. 

val futureResponse = Future(responseService.create(qkey,channel).get) 
futureResponse.map( storedResponse =&gt; Ok(storedResponse) )
              .recover{ case t:Throwable =&gt; BadRequest("Duplicate " + qkey) } 


I assume the type of the exception in the failure doesn't matter since your pattern matching was ignoring it too. 

I have avoided Future.fromTry since that would not execute responseService.create asynchronously. 

The complete code in context would look like: 

import play.api.cache.Cache
import play.api.mvc.{Action, Controller}

import scala.concurrent.Future
import scala.util.{Try, Success, Failure}

trait ResponseService{
  def create(key:String, channel:String):Try[String]
}

class Temp(responseService:ResponseService) extends Controller  {
  // in scala 2.11, use
  def fromTry[T](t:Try[T]):Future[T] = {
    t.map(Future.successful).recover{case t:Throwable=&gt;Future.failed(t)}.get
  }
  def submitResponse(qkey:String) = Action.async(parse.json){
    req =&gt;
      val json = req.body
      val channel = json.\("section").as[String]

      val currentQuestionKey = Cache.getAs[String](channel).getOrElse("N_A")
      if(!currentQuestionKey.equals(qkey)){
        Future.successful(BadRequest("Inactive or Invalid Key"))
      }
      else {
        val futureResponse = Future(responseService.create(qkey,channel).get)
        futureResponse.map{ storedResponse =&gt; Ok(storedResponse) }
                      .recover{ case t:Throwable =&gt; BadRequest("Duplicate " + qkey)}
      }

  }
}


Actually there is a bit more which can be improved. 

  val json = req.body
  val channel = json.\("section").as[String]


json is never used anywhere else, it can be inlined. 

  val channel = req.body.\("section").as[String]


This will throw an exception and return a status 500 if section is not a String. 

curl -X POST -H"Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"section":1234}' localhost:9000/temp/ABC


will result in 

[error] [play-akka.actor.default-dispatcher-2] play - Cannot invoke the action, eventually got an error: play.api.libs.json.JsResultException: JsResultException(errors:List((,List(ValidationError(error.expected.jsstring,WrappedArray())))))
[error] [play-akka.actor.default-dispatcher-2] application -

! @6l2ocbc00 - Internal server error, for (POST) [/temp/ABC] -&gt;

play.api.Application$$anon$1: Execution exception[[JsResultException: JsResultException(errors:List((,List(ValidationError(error.expected.jsstring,WrappedArray())))))]]
     at play.api.Application$class.handleError(Application.scala:296) ~[play_2.10-2.3.6.jar:2.3.6]
     at play.api.DefaultApplication.handleError(Application.scala:402) [play_2.10-2.3.6.jar:2.3.6]
     at play.core.server.netty.PlayDefaultUpstreamHandler$$anonfun$3$$anonfun$applyOrElse$4.apply(PlayDefaultUpstreamHandler.scala:320) [play_2.10-2.3.6.jar:2.3.6]
     at play.core.server.netty.PlayDefaultUpstreamHandler$$anonfun$3$$anonfun$applyOrElse$4.apply(PlayDefaultUpstreamHandler.scala:320) [play_2.10-2.3.6.jar:2.3.6]
     at scala.Option.map(Option.scala:145) [scala-library.jar:na]
    Caused by: play.api.libs.json.JsResultException: JsResultException(errors:List((,List(ValidationError(error.expected.jsstring,WrappedArray())))))
     at play.api.libs.json.JsValue$$anonfun$2.apply(JsValue.scala:67) ~[play-json_2.10-2.3.6.jar:2.3.6]
    at play.api.libs.json.JsValue$$anonfun$2.apply(JsValue.scala:67) ~[play-json_2.10-2.3.6.jar:2.3.6]
    at play.api.libs.json.JsResult$class.fold(JsResult.scala:77) ~[play-json_2.10-2.3.6.jar:2.3.6]
    at play.api.libs.json.JsError.fold(JsResult.scala:13) ~[play-json_2.10-2.3.6.jar:2.3.6]
    at play.api.libs.json.JsValue$class.as(JsValue.scala:65) ~[play-json_2.10-2.3.6.jar:2.3.6]


To avoid that you can use the validation API. 

(req.body \ "section").validate[String]


will return a JsResult[String] which is either a JsSuccess(value, path) or a JsError(errors). 

You can fold over that or map+getOrElse depending on your tastes. I suggest extracting the successul case to a specific method for improved readability. 

The final code looks like :

import play.api.cache.Cache
import play.api.mvc.{Result, Action, Controller}

import scala.concurrent.{ExecutionContext, Future}
import scala.util.{Try, Success, Failure}

class ResponseService{
  def create(key:String, channel:String):Try[String] = Try("x")
}

class Temp(responseService:ResponseService)(implicit app:play.api.Application, executor:ExecutionContext) extends Controller  {
  // in scala 2.11, use
  def fromTry[T](t:Try[T]):Future[T] = {
    t.map(Future.successful).recover{case t:Throwable=&gt;Future.failed(t)}.get
  }
  def submitResponse(qkey:String) = Action.async(parse.json){  req =&gt;
    def respondWithChannel(channel:String): Future[Result] = {
      val currentQuestionKey = Cache.getAs[String](channel).getOrElse("N_A")
      if(!currentQuestionKey.equals(qkey)){
        Future.successful(BadRequest("Inactive or Invalid Key"))
      } else {
        val futureResponse = Future(responseService.create(qkey,channel).get)
        futureResponse.map{ storedResponse =&gt; Ok(storedResponse) }
                      .recover{ case t:Throwable =&gt; BadRequest("Duplicate " + qkey)}
      }
    }

    (req.body \ "section").validate[String].fold(
      error =&gt; Future.successful(BadRequest("section was not a valid JSON string ")),
      respondWithChannel
    )
  }
}


Notice that I chose to use a class, which means you will have to inject the necessary depencies through the constructor. For local testing, I used a static compile time injection through an object instantiation: 

object Temp extends Temp(new ResponseService)(play.api.Play.current, 
play.api.libs.concurrent.Execution.defaultContext)


The corresponding route being 

POST    /temp/:qkey     controllers.Temp.submitResponse(qkey:String)


Also note that by using the parse.json body parser any call which is made to your action without providing a json body will be rejected with a 400 error generated in the framework.