When you start getting picky, you don't use SUBPLOT anymore because it is not that flexible. Instead you create an axes object that covers the full extent and use it for global titles/legends/etc, and you place your other axes by computing their position.
figure( 'Units', 'normalized', 'Position', [0.2, 0.2, 0.6, 0.6], ...
'Color', 'white' ) ;
% - Bg axes and main title.
bgAxes = axes( 'Position', [0, 0, 1, 1], 'XColor', 'none', 'YColor', 'none', ...
'XLim', [0, 1], 'YLim', [0, 1] ) ;
text( 0.5, 0.95, 'A Small Example', 'FontSize', 16, ...
'HorizontalAlignment', 'center', 'FontWeight', 'bold' ) ;
% - Positions.
x = linspace( 0.05, 0.6, 4 ) ;
w = 0.8 * diff( x(1:2) ) ;
y = linspace( 0.07, 0.7, 3 ) ;
h = 0.8 * diff( y(1:2) ) ;
% - Headers for array still in bgAxes.
for colId = 1 : numel( x )-1
text( x(colId)+w/2, 0.03, sprintf( 'Label X%d', colId ), ...
'HorizontalAlignment', 'center', 'FontWeight', 'bold' ) ;
end
for rowId = 1 : numel( y )-1
text( 0.02, y(rowId)+h/2, sprintf( 'Label Y%d', rowId ), ...
'HorizontalAlignment', 'center', 'Rotation', 90, 'FontWeight', 'bold' ) ;
end
% - Array of plots.
for colId = 1 : numel( x )-1
for rowId = 1 : numel( y )-1
axes( 'Position', [x(colId), y(rowId), w, h] ) ;
plot( sin( rand(1) * (1:10)), 'b' ) ;
grid( 'on' ) ;
end
end
% - Surface.
axes( 'Position', [0.65, 0.45, 0.3, 0.45] ) ;
[X, Y] = meshgrid( -5: .5 : 5 ) ;
Z = Y.*sin(X) - X.*cos(Y) ;
s = surf(X,Y,Z,'FaceAlpha',0.5) ;
s.EdgeColor = 'none';
% - Time series
axes( 'Position', [0.05, 0.72, 0.515, 0.15] ) ;
x = linspace( 0, 10, 100 ) ;
plot( rand(size(x)) + 3 * sin(x) .* exp(-x/5), 'r' ) ;
xlabel( 't [s]' ) ;
ylabel( 'A [V]' ) ;
grid( 'on' ) ;
% - Barchart.
axes( 'Position', [0.65, 0.05, 0.3, 0.3] ) ;
histogram( randn(1000, 1) ) ;
set( gca, 'Box', 'off' ) ;
