I can create plots to my hearts content in both, but when
> I ask to rescale the plots, e.g. axis([-.2,2.4,-2,2.4]),
> NOTHING happens to the figure drawn via IDLE, whereas the
> command works as expected in IPython.
Are you running matplotlib in idle in "interactive" mode, as described
http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/interactive.html
ipython in pylab mode automatically turns on interactive mode...
JDH