A simple way is to copy the axes object to the required figure.
hIm_orig2 = tiff_image(:,:,1:3);
hFig=figure('units','normalized','outerposition',[0 0 1 1]);
set(0,'CurrentFigure',hFig)
subplot(4,7,[1 2 3 4 8 9 10 11 15 16 17 18])
imshow(hIm_orig2)
title('reference image','FontSize',15,'Color',[0,0,.9])
improfile
axProfile = gca;
axProfileNew = copyobj(axProfile, hFig);
This will create an axis which will be overlapping the original axis. To remove overlapping and specify a position use axProfileNew.Position property.
