The behavior of figure, axes, plot, etc, is usually much more predictable if you use:
- the optional handle input, and
- specify the data and options using Property+Value pairs.
It takes a bit more writing (and learning), but it tends to remove most of these (perhaps unwanted) higher-level behaviors. For example in your code, simply replace
ax = axes;
set(ax,'Position',[0 0 1 1]);
with
ax = axes('Position',[0 0 1 1]);
Also note that plot creates its own axes, if need be.
