Spyder has a Jupyter notebook plugin. I was able to get a notebook going and link the kernel to the IDE. The variable editor worked and I could debug code in Spyder and then paste it into the notebook. The notebook piece of it was good for graphics, widgets, markdown, etc.
Hard to say as I am not a power-user/coder by any standard least of all those of this forum. I've tried Python on and off over the years and the Spyder 3.x/Jupyter combo was the closest I could get to the kind of UI that Matlab offers: Variable inspector, debugger, persistent/docked plots, documentation, recordkeeping, etc. It wasn't clear whether the Spyder/Jupyter plugin was going to be maintained in future Spyder releases and the combo, although close, was not as smooth as I would have liked.
Ultimately, Matlab is a better fit for the things I want to do in technical computing. My employer offers it and Simulink with a wide variety of toolboxes and blocksets so I can get farther faster for the problems that interest me or that I am asked to solve. The new table datatype and the steadily improving Livescript make exploration and notetaking very easy. I've also been able to rely on Mathworks documentation to get up-to-speed in new areas.
