Ah! I left part of the explanation out before. Don't move your cut combs directly to the outside - migrate them there.
First, put a new frame between the two combs until they draw it out. Then place two new frames sandwiched between the three drawn frames. Keep moving the unwanted frames toward the outside, until they get there.
If you move them directly there, it either splits up the bees or causes them to abandon those combs to cluster in the middle, neither of which is a good thing.
So, I would move them back to the center, but give them a new frame in the middle to work on.
If you are using plastic foundation, give it a good spray of sugar water to get them interested.
What's with the three inches of space? Is the comb so screwed up that you need to leave out frames? Three inches of space is going to cause problems. You might try filling it with crumpled newspaper so they don't try to draw comb there.