What This Issue Means
This error is due to the presence of a MATLABPATH environment variable. In MATLAB R2016a and earlier on Windows, this feature is not supported. It is only supported on UNIX and macOS platforms for those versions.
In R2016a and earlier on Windows, if MATLABPATH is set and does not include the directory $matlabroot\toolbox\local (where $matlabroot is the root MATLAB directory), MATLAB cannot access built-in functions, as it limits the search path to only what's defined in the variable.
Try This Workaround
The recommended solution is to remove the MATLABPATH environment variable entirely when using MATLAB R2016a or earlier on Windows.
If there is only a single MATLAB installation on your computer, you can resolve the error by updating the MATLABPATH environment variable to include the $matlabroot\toolbox\local directory. However, since this path is MATLAB-release specific, this approach will cause compatibility issues if you have multiple MATLAB installations and is therefore not recommended.
