I think the more common sensical answer in no, but in the RAW, I'm not certain.

Q?: When producing a new figure (army or scout), it is placed in the outskirts of the producing city - does this mean that, since the spot the scout gathers from is referred to as counting as being in the outskirts of that city?

Sorry - here on my iPad, I only have a tiny window to type in and can only see like two lines of about 20 chars per line. Meant to finish that question like:

Since the scout's square is referred to in multiple places as being considered in that city's outskirts for the turn it gathers to it, can the city place new (scout or army) units in with a gathering scout? Or is it restricted to the 8 squares physically adjacent to the actual city marker?

If I am reading your post / Question correctly, then no you cannot place new figures in the square that a scout is sending resources back to the city. The square the waward scout is in only counts as a ciy outskirt for the pourpose of resource gathering, it loads up the wagon and sents it back to the city, not for any other action. the resource gathering actually takes place in an earlier phase than city managment and must be declared then, as per the rules. Thus it is restricted to the 8 (or 10 with Metropolis) Squares physically adjacent to your city. I hope this helped, done from memory, don't have my rules in front of me right now, will correct later if neccesary.