MatPlot updating plots in JupyterLab are unresponsive

[maij]

This has been a persistent problem since using Jupyter notebooks, but it's become considerably worse since moving to JupyterLab.
The main problems are:

• Plots go blank while updating
• Plots display half rendered images while updating
• Plots don't finish displaying contents before update is called again
• These issues are exacerbated by any type of mouse interaction, even if you mouse-over the plot accidentally.

One quick fix for slower PCs is to increase the update interval, but I think disabling the updater thread until the update routine is completely finished would be ideal. I'm not sure if you can pass a callback function down the chain to the updated but that would be a nice solution if possible.