Import my article in my thesis while still accessing figures and section labels

I am writing my Thesis and I need to include one of my articles in the document. In the rest of the thesis, I need to refer directly to figures or sections hence I cannot just include the pdf. Also the section and the figure (and equation) numbering of the article has to be the one of the original article. The same apply to the references of the article, they have to be the same numbering as the original article. I need to add that I do not care for the original style of the article, I just want to include the content of the article. Then what ever text come after the article the numbering has to resume where it left before the article.

I was trying to find if there is something like a pause environment that ignores the rest of the document numbering but so far I have not found it.
I have tried a simple input. I have tried the packages standalone, docmute and subfiles but could not find a way to automatically have the right numbering (I have to do the numbering by hand).
I also found the combine document class which which I have not been able to use with the template document class of my university. For including the references I am aware of the chapterbib package but so far I have not been able to get my local bibliography to print or not return an error message.

Does anyone:

• Knows if what I am trying to do is even possible?
• If yes, how do you do it, please?