Your claimed result is not true, which probably explains why you're having trouble seeing it.
For simplicity I'll let $a = 0, b = 1$. Results for general $a$ and $b$ can be obtained by a linear transformation.
Let $X_1, \ldots, X_n$ be independent uniform $(0,1)$; let $Y$ be their minimum and let $X$ be their maximum. Then the probability that $X \in [x, x+\delta x]$ and $Y \in [y, y+\delta y]$, for some small $\delta x$ and $\delta y$, is
$$ n(n-1) (\delta x) (\delta y) (x-y)^{n-2} $$
since we have to choose which of $X_1, \ldots, X_n$ is the smallest and which is the largest; then we need the minimum and maximum to fall in the correct intervals; then finally we need everything else to fall in the interval of size $x-y$ in between. The joint density is therefore $f_{X,Y}(x,y) = n(n-1) (x-y)^{n-2}$.
Then the density of $Y$ can be obtained by integrating. Alternatively, $P(Y \ge y) = (1-y)^n$ and so $f_Y(y) = n(1-y)^{n-1}$.
The conditional density you seek is then
$$ f_{X|Y}(x|y) = {n(n-1) (x-y)^{n-2} \over n(1-y)^{n-1}} == {(n-1) (x-y)^{n-2} \over (1-y)^{n-1}}. $$
where of course we restrict to $x > y$.
For a numerical example, let $n = 5, y = 2/3$. Then we get $f_{X|Y}(x/y) = 4 (x-2/3)^3 / (1/3)^4 = 324 (x-2/3)^3$ on $2/3 \le x \le 1$. This is larger near $1$ than near $2/3$, which makes sense -- it's hard to squeeze a lot of points in a small interval!
The result you quote holds only when $n = 2$ -- if I have two IID uniform(0,1) random variables, then conditional on a choice of the minimum, the maximum is uniform on the interval between the minimum and 1. This is because we don't have to worry about fitting points between the minimum and the maximum, because there are $n - 2 = 0$ of them.
The sum of $n$ iid random variables with (continuous) uniform distribution on $[0,1]$ has distribution called the Irwin-Hall distribution. Some details about the distribution, including the cdf, can be found at the above link. One can then get corresponding information for uniforms on $]a,b]$ by linear transformation.
Best Answer
Take a look at the Wikipedia article on the Dirichlet distribution. In particular the Dirichlet distribution with $\alpha_i = 1$ for all $i$ is the uniform distribution on the simplex. Furthermore, the Dirichlet distribution can be generated by taking $X_1, \ldots, X_n$ to be independent gamma random variables with the right choice of paramters, and then $Y_i = X_i/(X_1 + \cdots + X_n)$. In the particular case you're asking about, you can take the $X_i$ to all be exponential random variables with the same mean.