On a Windows-based system, doing a
!<shell-command> &
will launch a terminal window to execute the shell command, which is what you are observing. However, on a Unix-based system, doing so will immediately return control to the MATLAB command window and execute "<shell-command>" in the background. You can rest assured that your python script has launched and is running as a background process until either your MATLAB session exits or your python script finishes execution. Here's an old related discussion: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/85938-how-to-open-new-terminal-visible-from-matlab-linux-mac.
Some limitations with this approach is that one is unable to see the output of the python script and one cannot terminate the exact python process as the Process ID (PID) is not known.
It may be beneficial for you to utilize MATLAB's External Interface for Python and run your script in "Out of Process" execution mode as documented here: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_external/out-of-process-execution-of-python-functionality.html. This gives the ability to terminate the python process manually using the "terminate" command: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/pythonenvironment.terminate.html.
