Sounds as if the Mono interleave is summing the two signals
after they've been individually limited, which would give you a nominal 3dB boost. But I'm not able to replicate that. Multiple limiters I tried maintain output level regardless of interleave.
Only thing I can think is that maybe you have ProChannel active on the Master and set to Post, and it's doing something after the limiter that is boosting a Mono signal more than a stereo one.
In any case it's likely a project-specific issue. I don't think it should matter, but what's your Pan Law?