This paper aims to explore the actual working mechanism of sandwich-like meta-plates by periodically attaching nonlinear mass-beam-spring (MBS) resonators for low-frequency wave absorption. The nonlinear MBS resonator consists of a mass, a cantilever beam and a spring that can provide negative stiffness in the transverse vibration of the resonator, and its stiffness is tunable by changing the parameters of the spring. Considering the nonlinear stiffness of the resonator, the energy method is applied to obtain the dispersion relation of the sandwich-like meta-plate and the band-gap bounds related to the amplitude of resonator is derived by dispersion analysis. For the finite sized sandwich-like meta-plate with the fully free boundary condition subjected to external excitations, its dynamic equation is also established by the Galerkin method. The frequency response analysis of the meta-plate is carried out by the numerical simulation, whose band-gap range demonstrates good agreement with the theoretical one. Results show that the band-gap range of the present meta-plate is tunable by the design of the structural parameters of the MBS resonator. Furthermore, by analyzing the vibration suppression of the finite sized meta-plate, it can be observed that the nonlinearity of resonators can widen the wave attenuation range of meta-plate.