From Matlab's documentation of the figure properties:
https://de.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/matlab.ui.figure-properties.html

> WindowStyle — Window style
> 'normal' (default) | 'modal' | 'docked'
> * 'docked' — The figure displays in the desktop or a document window. When the WindowStyle property is set to 'docked', you cannot set the DockControls property to 'off'. The 'docked' option is not supported in MATLAB Online.
>
> Position — Location and size of drawable area
> You cannot specify the figure Position property when the figure is docked.

IIUC, that means no scrollbar or clipping when docked.

AFAIU, when a window is docked, it cannot have arbitrary dimensions in the sense that it must fill the space in some predetermined layout.
 
How are the "(outer)position" figure properties handled in Matlab when a figure is docked?

The reason it doesn't work for the plot windows is that they are not currently implemented as objects derived from dockable widgets.

It would also be nice if the layout of the main window that accepts dockable widgets was a bit more flexible than the current two-column layout, but that's a separate issue.

Since the gui already provides the possibility to have all widgets in the main window and visible at the same time, the remaining request is to include figures into the main window. I am therefore changing the title and lowering the priority.

Bill, were you successful in arranging the dock widgets as desired?

It should be possible to stack editor and command window (or other windows vertically).

And yo can also create different "viewing panes" by placing the first widgets of these panes to the desired position and then move other widgets onto it; they should be automatically tabbed with the first widget. Or did I understand the OP in the wrong way?

Having figures inside the main window would be a nice feature that I am also currently missing during online meetings when sharing octave's main window (not the whole desktop) in order to show simulations but not having the resulting figures within the shared window.

Sometimes I want to see the Editor and Command Window at the same time. And it would be nice if plot windows could be inside the GUI.

What if an extra viewing pane was available so that you could see multiple elements of the UI at the same time? For me the most common is Command Window/Editor. But Editor/Documentation might be useful, too. Each viewing pane could have separate tabs. And you could drag tabs from one pane to the other to switch the view as you like it.

For plots, it might be nice to have a tabbed interface to switch between separate plots. They could be equal with Command Window/Editor/Documentation.