The idea is that a "figure" can be composed of many "images", because the possibility of visually inspect them at the same time is what conveys the message of the figure.

You can find many examples in peer-reviewed papers, for example multiple similar images:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Image-compression-comparison-of-Lena-image-a-Original-Image-Image-compressed-by-b_fig7_228959932

or figure 6 here for heterogneous pictures that needs to be seen together:
https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/21/3465/2021/#&gid=1&pid=1