I tried following your instructions, leaving the .module files with the 17.1 naming scheme (e.g. CompBioStudy.module) as well as adding the suffix (e.g. CompBioStudy-17.2.module). All I did with tomcat was fire up the debugger in intelliJ, no building with Gradle.

The webpart isn't loading now, but the modules are visible and appear to be enabled. Not seeing any errors in intelliJ or the chrome dev tools (console and network tabs).