I have just started using LaTex for documentation at work, after years struggling with Word, its a real revelation.
\usepackage{float}
...
\begin{document}
...
\begin{figure}[H]
But LaTeX is often better at determining where a figure should go. There is usually no reason it has to be right after a certain paragraph - books and magazines certainly don't do that. It's just another thing to get used to coming from Word.