Take Bridesmaids.
You have The Protagonist, the character with the point-of-view problem. She is different from The Best Friend, even though they have a shared history and sense of humor; they have different qualities that generate conflict. Lillian is not a fuck-up like Annie. That makes a lot of conflict when Lillian asks Annie to be her maid of honor, which is a lot of responsibility.
Then, you have The Antagonist. Helen has qualities out of Annie’s worst nightmares. She’s rich, she has style and she’s aggressively moving in on Annie’s best friend. Conflict.
Then you have the other friends in the friend group. Rita, Becca and Megan. Megan is a balls-out wild woman with a huge heart, Rita wants to cut loose from her all-male family and Becca is a sweet naif.
Those are all character types that create different kinds of conflict when they talk to the main characters and to each other. When they do speak, it is not chit chat or filler, it quickly makes a point. Not everyone chimes in on everything. Their characters jump off the page because every one of their lines defines their main characteristic more completely.
Or, take The Hangover.
Here, the antagonist is outside the group and there are fewer characters. There is a strong time-lock on The Hangover that escalates the stakes much more quickly. More friends in this plot would only slow it down.
Still, the conflict among characters comes from who they are. Stu is a risk-averse worrier who is highly motivated to stay that way because he’s afraid of his live-in girlfriend. He’s caught in a vise between his comfort zone and two people who just think he’s uptight. He’s the hinge between polar opposites Phil and Alan.
If these characters were three copies of the same basic bro, the comedy would evaporate.
Drama works the same way. Your characters have to have defining traits that fall naturally into conflict with each other, and what they say and do has to spring directly from those traits to create fresh story.
If you aren’t doing this with your friend groups, you don’t need friends like them.