I’ve been trying to generate some mapping plots in matlab recently and am having trouble with some of the basics. Before I can really progress any further could someone please show me a way of producing the map shown below with the basic mapping toolbox in matlab. And if possible how would I label certain locations (if I had the lat/long).

Many thanks for your time.
Take a look at the Mapping Toolbox docs, http://www.mathworks.com/help/toolbox/map/f6-13193.html the section named “Your First Maps” is probably a great place to get started. Additionally these video tutorials will probably be informative: http://www.mathworks.com/products/mapping/examples.html
Keep in mind however, that the mapping toolbox is designed to help you manipulate, interact with, and visualize geospatial data. It doesn’t necessarily come with that data. It does however provide a way to obtain data using a Web Mapping Service. See the Web Map Service Examples on this page: http://www.mathworks.com/help/toolbox/map/exampleindex.html