SIFT is an important and useful algorithm in computer vision but it seems that it is not part of Matlab or any of its toolboxes.
Why ? Does Matlab offer something better or equivalent ?
MATLAB has SURF available as part of the Computer Vision Toolbox but not SIFT: http://www.mathworks.com/help/vision/ref/surfpoints-class.html. However, both algorithms are pretty much the same with some minor (but crucial) differences, such as using integral images and a fast Hessian detector. I won't go into those differences in any further detail, but you can certainly read up on the work here: http://www.vision.ee.ethz.ch/~surf/eccv06.pdf. As to the reason why MathWorks decided to use SURF instead of SIFT... it could be any reason really. AFAIK, there is no official reason why one was chosen over the other as they are both subject to being patented.
However, if you want to use SIFT within MATLAB, one suggestion I have is to use the VLFeat toolbox where a C and MATLAB implementation of the keypoint, detection and matching framework has been made available and is open source. It also has a variety of other nice computer vision algorithms implemented, but VLFeat is one of the libraries that I know of that manages to compute SIFT as accurately as the original patented algorithm.
If you're dead set on using SIFT, check VLFeat out! Specifically, check out the official VLFeat tutorial on SIFT using the MATLAB wrappers: http://www.vlfeat.org/overview/sift.html