Your opening of the main while loop where your comment is “the loop that refuses to go anywhere”, when you’re moving it, are you also moving its closing statements? That should go after your opening:
if ( have_posts() ) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();
However, if you’re doing this but not also moving one of your endwhiles to in front of the closing endif then it would cause problems. I would check your endwhile and your endif statements and make sure they’re all lining up with the if and while statements.
