Mighty matplotlib isn't going away any time soon, but just because Plotly makes interactive plots, it doesn't mean you can't also

a) customize every aspect of the chart, from the fonts to the length of the axis ticks to the legend placement etc (see the full list of thousands of available customization attributes here: https://plot.ly/python/reference/)

b) export to raster or vector formats for publication (https://plot.ly/python/static-image-export/)

c) use high-level grammar-of-graphics-inspired tools like https://plotly.express/ to create complex charts in a single line of code.