The issue is not matlab. You'll have to go through exactly the same difficulties whichever language you use. The issue is more that a Word document is not a simple string. You can certainly extract the various sections of text from a word document in any language but you'll have to work for it.
All the functions to navigate a Word document are documented on MSDN. The most important object for you is the Document object.
This could be a start:
word = actxserver('Word.Application');
wdoc = word.Documents.Open('C:\somewhere\somefile.docx');
%wdoc is the Document object which you can query and navigate.
sometext = wdoc.Content.Text;
