[whpalmer4]

Well, for the rectangle cases you mention, it's just a click or two on the options above the numbers to arrange for your text to hug one corner or another between the options to align the text with the top, middle or bottom of the shape, and the options to control how the text is justified. Line labels you can just slide up and down the line, and see also the options in the Geometry inspector. You can use arbitrary shapes as labels, too, not just plain text. And of course if you have a large degree of similarity between many of your labeled objects, you can easily create a stencil for producing them with your preferred options already set.