I do find it very frustrating that the layout extent apparently cannot be linked to the map extent. I was looking forward to being able to have all my different figures as separate layouts so I don't need to change headers, sources, etc everytime I want to print a different figure. I typically have the same 4 or 5 figures for every report, sometimes more. It really is a pain that I have to physically activate the map on each layout and navigate to the same view. It takes way too much time to attempt to match views and scales.
I can understand that sometimes people want different views on different layouts. What's so hard about being able to turn on and off a dynamic link between the map view and layout view?