How to only show text?

You can use e.g. environ to collect the body and throw them away:

\documentclass[]{article}
\usepackage{environ,listings}

\RenewEnviron{table}{}
\RenewEnviron{lstlisting}{}
\RenewEnviron{figure}{}
\begin{document}
abllbl

\begin{figure}
figure
\end{figure}

\begin{table}
table
\end{table}

\begin{lstlisting}
abc
\end{lstlisting}

\end{document}

If you don't want to throw away the whole content, you can redefine the commands you want to ignore, e.g. \renewcommand\includegraphics[2][]{}.

Here's a LuaLaTeX-based solution. It defines a Lua function called hide_stuff which "gobbles" the contents of all figure, table, and lstlisting environments. The only input-related requirements are: (a) the environments' \begin and \end statements must not occur on one and the same input line, and (b) there's only one \begin{...} or \end{...} statement per input line.

Note that it's not necessary to modify or "prime" any of the existing figure, table, and lstlisting environments. All you need to do (besides using LuaLaTeX to compile the document) is to copy the code block from \usepackage{luacode} to \AtBeginDocument{...} into the preamble of your LaTeX document.

% !TEX TS-program = lualatex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{listings} % for 'lstlistings' environment    
\usepackage{luacode} % for 'luacode' environment
\begin{luacode}

in_group = false  -- initialize a Boolean variable
function hide_stuff ( buff )
  if string.find ( buff, "\\begin{figure}" ) or 
     string.find ( buff, "\\begin{table}" ) or
     string.find ( buff, "\\begin{lstlisting}" ) then 
            -- start gobbling
            buff = buff:gsub ( "\\begin%b{}.-$" , "" )
            in_group = true
  elseif string.find ( buff, "\\end{figure}" ) or 
         string.find ( buff, "\\end{table}" ) or
         string.find ( buff, "\\end{lstlisting}" ) then
            buff = buff:gsub ( "^.-\\end%b{}" , "" )
            in_group = false -- end gobbling
  elseif in_group == true then  
            buff = "" -- keep gobbling
  end
  return buff
end

\end{luacode}  
%% Assign the fuction to LuaTeX's "process_input_buffer" callback
\AtBeginDocument{\directlua{luatexbase.add_to_callback (
   "process_input_buffer", hide_stuff, "hide_stuff" )}}

\begin{document}

aaa\begin{figure}
\caption{AAA} \end{figure}

bbb

\begin{table} \caption{BBB}
\end{table}ccc

\begin{lstlisting}
CCC
\end{lstlisting}

uuu\begin{figure} % empty "figure" environment
\end{figure}vvv

\end{document}

This can be solved by using booleans.

You define a boolean variable which states whether you want to include figures and tables or not. Each figure and table statement has to be surrounded by an if statement testing for the boolean variable.

The simplest way to do this is:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\newif\ifplotfig  % you can also call it ifplottab or ifplotfigtab
\plotfigtrue      % uncomment for 'setting' it to false

\begin{document}
  Some text with reference to Fig.~\ref{fig:myLabel} 

  \begin{figure}[h]
    \centering
    \ifplotfig
      \includegraphics[width=0.65\textwidth]{./SOMEFIGURE.pdf}
    \fi
    \caption{Test Caption}\label{fig:myLabel}
  \end{figure}

  Some more text with reference to Table~\ref{tab:myLabel}...

  \begin{table}
    \caption{Tables Caption}\label{tab:myLabel}
    \centering
    \ifplotfig
      \begin{tabular}{c|c c}
        Grid & Some Value & Another Value  \\ \hline
        CD24 & -1398 & -1191 \\
        CD72 & -1926 & -2655
      \end{tabular}
    \fi
  \end{table}
\end{document}

This solution comes from this and this answers. Here you will find an alternative solution.

In order to reduce the time spend on adding the if clauses you search & replace

• \begin{tabular} by \ifplotfig \begin{tabular},
• \end{tabular} by \end{tabular} \fi and
• \includegraphics{...} by \ifplotfig \includegraphics{...} \fi.

For the latter replacement you need regular expressions or a search & replace functions that uses non-regex wildcards. If you have no experience with these, you replace

• \includegraphics with \ifplotfig \includegraphics and
• .pdf} with .pdf} \fi. The pdf needs to be replaced by the appropriate file ending of your figure files.