If I have a label and I add another figure to it. The label is rotated by the locator. But, the figure inside it remains in place (or, more likely, the locator associated with it, places it according to the old label placement).
I think that in general, the best approach is for each figure to have a local coordinate space and then child figures are placed in this space and to draw them globally, any matrix that applies to the figure is applied to them as well (and recursively if that figure is inside another)