Sounds like you already tried to drop the segments and they told you no. I suspect that's the answer. HUCA isn't usually a rewarding strategy with HA because their agents have little to no discretion to vary policies. One option for saving the upgrades would be just to change your HNL-LIH segment on the outbound to shortly before your return flight and return HNL-LIH-HNL-JFK, That would waste part of a day but save the longhaul upgrades.