Re. your last paragraph/sentence: You are correct, those pins/leads are NOT bridged/connected on the one driver that I added the emitter leads to yet.
Those pins/leads are only bridged/connected via the blob on the one driver that I haven’t added the emitter leads to yet (and haven’t tested yet).
I was going to post about this: I chose to add the leads to the board that I did add the leads to because that blob didn’t look “right”. At various times, I’ve been thinking maybe the blob SHOULD be there, and maybe the board that doesn’t have the blob is the one that’s “wrong”, and maybe I should test the blob-ful board also and maybe that one will give me 3 amps, but then I decided to focus on the blob-less board first.