Change in axes 'activepositionproperty' with new monitors?

I changed my monitors and now the 'activepositionproperty' of axes behaves differently.

Before, when I did things such as add xlabels or remove xticklabels, there was no affect on the size (position) of my axes.

Now, adding/removing axes labels or ticklabels does have an effect, unless I set the "ActivePositionProperty" to "position".

This is a bit annoying, so I tried: set(0,'defaultaxesactivepositionproperty','position'), but this does not seem to have an effect.

My questions are:

(1) why did the change in monitors have this effect? I only changed the hardware and installed some monitor drivers.

(2) how can I avoid setting 'ActivePositionProperty' to 'position' every time I have an axes, considering that the default setting does not seem to be working?

Thanks,