Matlab is a program, but it’s more like the Java virtual machine than like MS Word. Both the JVM and Matlab are able to execute arbitrary programs supplied as input. So it’s meaningful to talk about Matlab-the-language. The one difference is that Java is a standardized language, whereas Matlab-the-language is “whatever Matlab-the-program accepts these days”.
Matlab is a program, but it’s more like the Java virtual machine than like MS Word. Both the JVM and Matlab are able to execute arbitrary programs supplied as input. So it’s meaningful to talk about Matlab-the-language. The one difference is that Java is a standardized language, whereas Matlab-the-language is “whatever Matlab-the-program accepts these days”.