Possibly Java breaking MATLAB 2013b (and below?)

MATLAB window and plots are not responding, similar to this thread:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/79489-java-1-6-0_51-breaks-matlab-2012b-and-below

Often the gui window often (but not always) freezes on start (if I am quick I can type a few characters in the command window before it freezes). I am now running from a command line without the gui and every third plot freezes not responding to clicks on the plot (the menus do work, e.g. print, save, quit). I tried updating the Java Heap Memory to 1 GB and this helped but did not solve the preblem.

I am running R2013b (8.2.0.701) on Ubuntu Linux 12.04.4 LTS, 64-bit machine. I am using java-6-openjdk-amd64 (not sure when this was updated).

Is there a recommended java that would be better? I just switched to java-7-openjdk-amd64 and hopefully this resolves the problem. Thanks for the help.