You are right @elliot, I left out some bits of information.
I am using the form on the Buddypress user profile page so users can add more info about themselves. I have two calls of register_field_group() in my functions.php – one for the edit view of the user profile and one for the public view of the profile. Basically a user edits the profile, previews it and can hit a little checkbox below to “publish the profile” which internally restricts the user from changing the profile again (client wants to review user profiles so this is necessary).
So I have these two field_groups that I would like to display in two different locations of the user profile in the theme. Omitting ‘field_groups’ will render both field groups at both locations of the form as I have these location rules in my registration calls:
...
'location' => array (
array (
array (
'param' => 'ef_user',
'operator' => '==',
'value' => 'all',
'order_no' => 0,
'group_no' => 0,
),
),
),
...
