Just creating figures with images in axes on them won't popup another figure with tabs in it when you click on any of the images, unless you set up a callback to do that when you clicked on the image. This doesn't do that:
clearvars;
close all;
% load('test.mat');
img = imread('peppers.png');
f_img = imread('onion.png');
sq_img = imread('cameraman.tif');
figure; imshow(img);
figure; imshow(f_img);
figure; imshow(sq_img);
Are you sure you're showing us ALL the code? If so, attach 'test.mat' and a screenshot.
