How to do subplots when plot_histogram etc. closes the figure

Question

I would like to display two histograms next to each other, using something like matplotlib's subplot function. This doesn't seem to work because plot_histogram() closes the figure.

It is possible to show a figure that has been closed - see this post. I tried this approach but it doesn't work (see code below). Does anyone know how to do this?

figs = []
for i in range(num):
    counts = result.get_counts(circuits[i])
    figs.append(plot_histogram(counts, title='here', bar_labels=True))
    print(counts)
plt.subplot(121)
new_fig = plt.figure()
new_mngr = new_fig.canvas.manager
new_mngr.canvas.figure = figs[0]
fig.set_canvas(new_mngr.canvas)
plt.show(fig)

plt.subplot(122)
new_fig = plt.figure()
new_mngr = new_fig.canvas.manager
new_mngr.canvas.figure = figs[1]
fig.set_canvas(new_mngr.canvas)
plt.show(fig)

Answer 1

~Moved from comment to answer~

If stopping plot_histogram() from closing the figure will fix this issue, then there is a way to do just that. If you go into the qiskit code to qiskit/visualization/counts_visualization.py you will find the plot_histrogram() method. Near the end of this method, you will see the conditional statement

if fig: 
    plt.close(fig)

If you comment that out, it should stop automatically closing the figure when you call plot_histogram().