Everybody seems to tell it.

I've traditionally identified this story as a Sufi tale. When I look for it as such, about ten examples turn up on the web. Of course I'm sure that other versions exist as well, though finding them isn't that easy. I found only one reference to a Hasidic version, for instance. I doubt that all of the almost 600 hits from a search for "under the lamp", "search" and "keys" actually relate the story, but it's a good guess that a large percentage of them do.

The most classic example (that I'm familiar with) is here:

There is an old Sufi story about a man who dropped his keys on the dark side of the street at night, then crossed the street to the lamppost where it was bright to begin his search.

When a colleague of his asked him why he was looking under the lamp instead of where he dropped his keys, he replied,

"I am looking here because there is more light."

So I found myself looking where it made sense to find a reference - but in this case at least, if we think of doing the opposite, we can well understand why we do search in the more obvious places.

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