1. Do you absolutely must have the figure in a specific place? (Can you not refer to it?)
1.5 are you really, really, really sure your figure can not float? (check out placeins)
2. for finer control use \figure[!htbp]... (h is here, t is top, b is bottom, p is page )
3. Still not satisifed? A last resort is to use H from the float package.