You can do whatever you like as long as you follow proper substitution formatting. See the below tutorial on how to properly substitute in tabs and fields. Please read it carefully as there different ways to substitute in fields (e.g. [FIELD_NAME] is always raw stored values).
www.joomlapolis.com/documentation/279-community-builder/tutorials/18353-using-substitutions-throughout-cb
Please keep in mind tabs are not designed with the explicit behavior of being used outside of the profile. If they have any form of pagination or redirect behavior they will typically send the user back to CBs profile and not to your article.
You do not have to use the canvas positions in CB. You are free to move tabs around as you see fit to have profiles with whatever layout you prefer as there are a significant amount of tab positions for various usecases. I recommend reading the CB Primer Book which you can download below for a tab position map.
www.joomlapolis.com/downloads/documents
Additionally you could look into 3rd party extension CB Profile Pro, which as I understand it lets you build custom profile layouts using a substitution like interface.