To find the area under the curve in MATLAB, the command used is quad(f(x), a, b), which evaluates the integral from a to b of the function f(x). There is some confusion regarding the commands "quad" and "quad1," with clarification needed on whether f(x) represents y = f(x). For plotting data values from Excel in MATLAB, users can either approximate the curve with a polynomial and evaluate the integral or use the formula that sums the product of function values and the differences in x values, though these methods yield approximate solutions. For an exact solution, the function f(x) must be known.