The Live Editor code and text display area appears to be a java canvas.
When you use figure() inside of a live script, it is the same figure() as for traditional GUI. The main difference is that inside Live Script, NodeChildren is populated with a matlab.graphics.primitive.canvas.JavaCanvas instead of a matlab.ui.container.Container . It is possible to create a figure in Live Script and then to move its children to a different traditional figure created outside of Live Script -- but that is just the graphics content, not the live script and latex and so on. To get those things inside a GUI panel, you would have to find a way to get at the java canvas that holds them and somehow parent the canvas inside a figure.
I would not say that it is impossible, but there is no provided way to do it.
