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Yes, it is possible to launch roscore on the workstation and then have the Turtlebots connect to them. As for namespacing, you'll want to do that in /etc/ros/electric/turtlebot.launch for the basic TurtleBot hardware, and again in each nav stack launcher (turtlebot_navigation/gmapping_demo.launch, etc).

There are also a few arguments in launchfiles which will need to be adjusted to work properly within namespaces. For instance, turtlebot_bringup/kinect.launch has a few topics which need to have the "/" prefix removed. You should also set tf_prefix within /etc/ros/electric/turtlebot.launch to your namespace:

<param name="tf_prefix" type="string" value="$(arg robot_id)" />

You could also create a static transformation between a global frame and each TurtleBot's global frame, just so every TurtleBot is "stock" within its namespace:

<node pkg="tf" type="static_transform_publisher" name="base_ref" args="0 0 0 0 0 0 /odom /$(arg robot_id)/odom 100" />

I hope this helps!