I have basically the same problem, I just want 3 nodes next to each other(with components in them), but the placement of the nodes is very weird.
I also want to add cardinality to the links, but that doesn't work either.
I made a small example:
@startuml
node n1 {
component c1
}
node n2 {
component c2
}
n1 "1"-right-"1" n2
@enduml
but the link is still vertically and the "1" doesn't get added to the link