Referencing multiple labels at once

I would like to reference multiple labels in one reference, like it is possible when citing bibliography using the IEEE Standard. When citing, one is able to use:

This is a statement cite{Einstein1910, Newton1700, Moore1950}

Which in turn appears as: "This is a statement [1-3]"

Is it possible to use the same mechanism for labels together with the ref{} command?

For example, this input:

As seen in figures ref{fig:apple, fig:pear, fig:fig}

Should produce the following output: "As seen in figures 1.1-1.3" or "As seen in figures 1-3".
I tried using the classic ref command, as stated above, but this just resulted in the typical question marks appearing in the output.