I was struggling with the same problem and I think I may have found a solution. I'm posting this here in case you are still looking for a solution with SVGs and for other people who find this.
I'm using Matlab 2015b and exporting to SVG. I want to use SVG because some things look better than with matlab2tikz, e.g. transparent surfaces. I want text in my figures (labels, ticklabels, annotations) to be saved as text strings s.t. I can include the figure using the procedure described here . If my figure does not contain any complicated latex strings, the text is stored as text and everything works fine.
The problem arises when I have some text that is actually Latex stuff, e.g.
text(0,0,'$\rho$')
This is then saved with the symbol already inserted and the text in the SVG is a vector graphic, not text.
text(0,0,'$\rho$', 'interpreter', 'none')
creates an SVG that still has the '\rho' text, but its a vector graphic.
The Solution
If I do
text(0,0,'$\\rho$')
(i.e. using interpreter 'tex', NOT 'Latex', and NOT 'none') the text is stored as plain ascii text in the SVG file. Note the escaping '\'. Now we can even use custom commands defined in our latex documents. e.g.
text(0,0,'$\\mycommand\{\\rho\}$')
where '\mycommand{}' is some command defined in our Latex environment. Note that we have to escape every backslash '\' and also every curly brace {}.
I hope this helps somebody fighting with Matlab and Latex. (A fight that shouldn't be this hard considering what most people use Matlab for.)
