When I initially placed the 3 command buttons on the form I used the ribbon-Design-Command button
and simply placed it on the form.
I then copied the button to the clipboard and pasted twice to create the other 2 buttons.
Using this procedure seemed to be the cause of the spacing commands to be disabled.
I deleted the buttons and reinserted them individually by using the ribbon to insert all 3.
Now the commands are enabled and I'm able to space.
This does seem odd though, that pasting command buttons would cause thins.