for-each vs. apply-templates (was: Conformance of iXSLT ?)

Well if the specifcation is to do exactly that, then no. but what I
think you want to do is count all figures with a caption if you
are currently at a figure, and similarly for tables,
which would be

level="any" count="figure[caption]"

in the template for figure and

level="any" count="table[caption]"

in the template for table.

But not knowing the whole problem there may be some reason why that is
not appropriate in your case.