I wrote my PhD (physics) in LaTeX and I indeed needed to compile twice (at least) to have a correct DVI file.

It was 25 years ago, though, but apparently this part did not change.

This said, I was at least sure that I would get an excellent result and not be like my friend who used MS Word and one day his file was "locked". He could not add a letter to it and had to retype everything.

Compared to that my concern about where a figure would land in the final document was nothing.