Create a surface plot. Get the current axes and replace the default interactions with the pan and data tip interactions. Then hover over the surface to display data tips. Click and drag or tap and drag to pan.

surf(peaks)
ax = gca;
ax.Interactions = [panInteraction dataTipInteraction];

Plot a set of x and y values, and adjust the x-axis limits to narrow the view of the plot. Then replace the default set of interactions with a pan interaction that is restricted to the x-dimension. Drag within the plot to pan. Notice that you cannot pan vertically.

x = linspace(-500,500,5000);
y = sin(x)./x;
plot(x,y)
xlim([-50 50])
ax = gca;
ax.Interactions = panInteraction('Dimensions','x');