The heads of state "directed withdrawal of all armed groups by 30th March 2023 from occupied areas," the EAC said on Twitter after a mini-summit in Addis Ababa.
They also recommended an "immediate ceasefire" by all armed groups and the resettlement of people displaced by the violence in the mineral-rich east of the country.
The seven-nation EAC is leading mediation efforts to end the fighting, which has driven vast numbers of Congolese from their homes and exacerbated regional tensions.
Friday's talks took place on the eve of a two-day African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital and ahead of a meeting of the pan-African bloc's Peace and Security Council later in the day to discuss the DRC crisis.
An EAC military force deployed late last year in the east, where a resurgent rebel group known as the M23 has seized swathes of territory.
The M23 re-emerged from dormancy in late 2021, claiming that the government in Kinshasa had ignored a pledge to integrate them into the army.
The Tutsi-led group subsequently won a series of victories against the army and occupied chunks of territory in the province of North Kivu, including much of the region north of its capital, Goma.
The DRC accuses its smaller central African neighbor Rwanda of backing the M23, a charge that Rwanda denies.
U.N. experts, the United States and several other Western states agree with the DRC, however.
At Friday's meeting, the regional heads of state also called for the repatriation of Congolese refugees in Rwanda and Uganda and recommended the creation of an EAC "monitoring & evaluation mechanism" in the east of the DRC.
The EAC had issued similar calls for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of all armed groups, including foreign entities, at an extraordinary summit in Burundi on Feb. 4.
The United Nations said Friday that more than $600 million was needed this year to help a million people who have fled the DRC and the African countries where they have sought refuge.
The humanitarian crisis gripping the giant central African country is "one of the most complex and protracted" in the world, the U.N. refugee agency said.
Some 5.5 million people were displaced within the country as of last November, according to the agency.
