Example of how to thread a plotting widget so that only the latest command is run

widget_threading.py

from ipywidgets import VBox, Button, HTML
import time
from threading import Thread
from queue import Queue


class MyWidget(VBox):
    def __init__(self):
        super(MyWidget, self).__init__()
        
        self.button = Button(description='next')
        self.out = HTML('start')
        
        self.button.on_click(self.handler)

        self.children = [self.button, self.out]
        
        self.count = 0
        self.plotting_thread = None
        
        self.queue = Queue(maxsize=1)
        
        self.plotting_thread = Thread(target=self.plotter)
        self.plotting_thread.daemon = True
        self.plotting_thread.start()
        self.command_counter = 0
        
    def plotter(self):
        while True:
            command_counter = self.queue.get()
            self.move_up()
            print('command: {}'.format(command_counter))
            self.queue.task_done()
        
    def move_up(self):
        time.sleep(5)
        self.count += 1
        self.out.value = str(self.count)
        
    def handler(self, change):
        self.command_counter += 1
        if self.queue.full():
            self.queue.get()
            self.queue.task_done()
        self.queue.put(self.command_counter)

To test, run this in a notebook. Then click "next" a bunch of times in a row. The code should only execute twice- the firs time and the last time the button is pressed (as indicated by the command count).