Set those before you create any figures and you should be fine.
I've looked at the source code and there doesn't appear to be any other way to set them programmatically. (tick.set_pad() looks like it tries to do the right thing, but the padding seems to be set when the Ticks are constructed and can't be changed after that.)
As with many canonical questions, this one isn't very specific, and doesn't have a reproducible example, so here's an example for figure labels and title.
The other answers are great for axes plots, but there are other options for a figure, which can all be positioned by specifying the x= and y= parameter.