You probably weren't intending to use matrix operations there.
x3 = 0;
nc = 10;
[x1,x2] = meshgrid((1.68*(-1:1/nc:1)),(1.68*(-1:1/nc:1)));
% use .* and .^ for elementwise operations
y1 = 43.5943 - 12.5921*x1 + 4.08342*x2 + 3.6128*x3 ...
+ 14.4637*x1.^2 + 9.3*x1.*x2 + 4.1225*x1.*x3 ...
+ 12.5333*x2.^2 + 3.2325*x2.*x3 + 15.7648*x3.^2;
mesh (x1,x2,y1)