Use the pack or grid managers for such purposes. However, place has its uses in more specialized cases. Most importantly, it can be used by compound widget containers to implement various custom geometry managers. For example, the Notepad and SplitPane widgets use the place geometry manager. Another use is to position control buttons in dialogs, like the pushpin button in the PropertySheet dialog.
Patterns Let's look at some usage patterns.
Here's another variant. It packs a Label widget in a frame widget, and then places a DrawnButton in the upper right corner of the frame. The button will overlap the label. To see the result, check out the screenshots from of the Visualizer application. You can combine the absolute and relative options.