You can try the "openfig" function and make use of its figure visibility property. Below is an example to create a surface plot and make the figure invisible. Then, save the figure as a MATLAB figure file. Close the invisible figure.
surf(peaks)
set(gcf,'Visible','off')
savefig('MySavedPlot.fig')
close(gcf)
Open the saved figure and make it visible on the screen:
openfig('MySavedPlot.fig','visible')
Hope this helps.